Marijuana Deal Of The Day? Yep. I'm not joking!

Marijuana Daily Deal Coupons? Seriously?

If you haven’t heard of weedmaps.com, you will soon.  They have a daily deals system similar to daily deal juggernaut, Groupon.com.  And yes, they find marijuana daily deals, but the medicinal variety, of course.   

And just like the majority of the daily deal sites, you just have to sign-up with your email and in no time offers will hit you inbox. There are also the cell phone alert option where you get messages to your cell phone on medicinal marijuana discount coupons. 

As far as California’s Bay Area is concerned, the bonus lies in the fact that LA remains in limbo on finalizing the method of taxation of dispensaries. Dispensaries pay the freight, and the Bay stays ahead of the game yet again regarding legalization.

Medicinal marijuana Daily Deals is nationwide in scope, but based in California. The “individual freedom and personal liberty” collective was born there, but from coast to coast patients are now able to get their marijuana at prices lower than they’re used to. California will get many thanks for their courageous vision.

Weedmaps.com also enlists a variety of resources that members can take advantage of, like social networks, prizes, delivery options and (of course) a dispensary locator. It should be interesting to see how this evolves, the reaction to this discounted service.

Troy Dowden
http://www.dealdoc.com/

Groupon: In bed with the Devil?

Groupon, the daily deal giant, paid $3 million for a 30-second Super Bowl spot last week, and one wonders in hindsight if the vast majority of those dollars weren’t handed to someone in a red costume, with horns and the “purest of intentions.”

Groupon CEO Andrew Mason spoke to the recent controversy, saying that the ad was an attempt to make fun of those who it represented (that’s right – Groupon), and not at all a manipulation of the current climate of adversity in Tibet. That’s not all, though. Mason even suggested that there was yet another white-hat agenda: to bring awareness to Groupon’s various charitable endeavors. Perhaps Mason meant what he said, but many, many people disagree.

Look at it this way – if a joke actually has to be explained in detail, something isn’t right. The irony lies in the fact that with some slight editing, the ad could have not only been honorable, but inspiring to millions all over the globe, millions who are desperately waiting for ad agencies to produce campaigns that include integrity, compassion, and understanding. Groupon sure dropped the ball on world relations here, as many would agree.

The ad agency in question? - Crispin Porter & Bogusky. You might remember their recent campaign for Domino’s Pizza, where the company downs itself for creating a sub-par offering to hungry consumers over the years. CP & B took the stance that the best course of action (instead of coming clean about the several scandals over the years) would be a proactively apologetic campaign, one which would gradually win back customers, and re-solidify the Domino’s brand.

Here's how Crispin Porter's group creative director Tony Calcao explained it to Hemispheres Magazine:
"We realized that we couldn't just come out and say we have a brand new pizza, because no one's going to believe Domino's. The first thing you need to do is own up to the fact that you had to make a whole new pizza."

Where will the line be drawn when it comes to advertising to the masses? Should the courts get involved, or will their fines be well worth the black-hat advertising of certain ad agencies or companies?

Daily Deals Websites Get Their Closeup - During The Superbowl!

Lost in the controversy that is Groupon ‘s ad parody of situations in Tibet, is the fact that this was only one of four Daily Deal commercials that aired during the Super Bowl broadcast.  While the American public didn’t greet these ads as warmly as they did for Volkswagen’s Darth Vader ad or even the coworker-chimpanzees driving cars commercial, the ads aired by the Daily Deal companies were still quite effective.   This is because of two main reasons: the fact that the controversy Groupon caused attracted attention to both themselves and the industry, and the fact that both Groupon and LivingSocial were able to afford some the most expensive commercial slots in existence.  The Daily Deal Industry secured for itself many future customers, even if Groupon offended some of them momentarily.

            Of course when you have an audience of 163 million people, commercial time is going to be quite expensive.  There were four Daily Deal commercials in total, as LivingSocial.com also featured an advertisement.  Even though they did not all air during the Super Bowl’s official airtime (some were during the pre-game show), there must have been some good reasons behind these companies’ ability to buy such expensive airtime.

            Those reasons started with Groupon’s chief competitor: LivingSocial.  To say that the Washington D.C. based website had a good month in January would be an understatement.  According to Business Insider, a new infusion of money due to an agreement with Amazon.com allowed for LivingSocial to gain five million new users.  Throughout January, they were able to offer half-priced Amazon gift certificates.  These five million new customers represented three times more subscribers than Groupon gained during January.  Feeling their advantage over the market slipping away, Groupon felt it necessary to retaliate.  This led to the last minute purchasing of Super Bowl commercial time, which was used for the Tibet ad.

            According to Miles Nadal, Chairman and CEO of ad-agency giant MDC Partners, Groupon’s Tibet commercial has already generated 50,000 new customers.  Whether in bad taste or not, the commercial has achieved its goal.  After all, when trying to shop for a great daily bargain, is the average consumer really thinking about the morality of the company?  I think probably not.  Most Americans have not stopped shopping at big box stores, even though they chiefly sell imported products, whose outsourcing costs America jobs.  The company that can offer the lowest prices gets the sale.  This will undoubtedly be the case with Daily Deals as well.

Time should show that none of the controversy caused by Groupon’s commercials will be remembered.  Despite the fact that they may offended the American public with their joking about rainforest deforestization and whale conservation, and even caused public outburst by making light of the human rights disaster that is happening every day in Tibet.  However, what will be remembered is that this year’s Super Bowl proved to be an important point in the growth the Daily Deal Industry.  This was the point that many Americans that previously knew nothing about daily deals took a minute to stop and think about this a new way for them to save money.  From now on, most Americans will know of not only Groupon.com, but also the emerging market of Daily Deals.

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Dealdoc.com pulls deals from 300+ daily deals sites including Groupon and LivingSocial from over 200 cities and puts them on one website.

Another social network has arrived: ChirpMe

February 3, 2011

By Brian Good, Founder, DealDoc.com

Editor’s note: The following is a guest post by Brian Good.  Brian is the founder of DealDoc.com

Yet another social network has entered the fray, and its name is ChirpMe. It combines a mix of Facebook, Groupon, Twitter, Match.com, and a FourSquare concept is soon to be added. Founded by Josh Viner and his brother Jonathan (a couple of social visionaries in their own right) ChirpMe launched in January 2011. Within the first 48 hours, more than 1,000 people had already signed up. The boys hope to take the network nationwide in the near future.

“It’s a place where you connect and get to know people, get to know your friends better, and at the same time you can meet new people,” Josh said last week in an interview.

The system draws on this information to populate your account (though you are invited to fill in additional details). The site drives interactions in a variety of ways. During the initial setup, users select New Haven restaurants that they are interested in going to, information which will be used later on by the system to link that user with others who are interested in the same place. The users will be coaxed into going there by means of a special ChirpMe.com-only offer. It’s win-win-win: the users get a date, and a discount on a meal, the restaurant gets more business, and the site gets a kick-back from the restaurant.

The restaurant deals are the best example of spurring in-person contact, but the site also has more conventional electronic interaction methods. For starters, the system asks users randomly-generated questions for them to post answers to on their pages. Users can also trade comments back and forth on each others’ pages a la Facebook. You can even link your ChirpMe status to your Facebook account so that your posts show up in both places.

As previously mentioned, ChirpMe is only available in New Haven right now, but the model is really great for driving hyperlocal commerce and communication. It will take time for the brothers to grow it out to different cities. Larger, sprawling metropolitan areas like New York and Seattle may prove too unwieldy for ChirpMe, however taking a neighborhood-by-neighborhood approach might give them smaller chunks to chew on.

Groupon Patents and Lawsuits

Deal-of-the-day giant Groupon has recently come under fire due to their continued efforts to sue their competitors.  The legitimacy of these lawsuits has been brought into question, as they are based on the concept of online collective buying. Groupon feels they have exclusive right to the online collective buying process because of a company owned patent.  The patent at the center of these lawsuits describes Groupon’s collective buying process as the “On-Line Marketing System and Method”. While there have been many different companies that offer a very similar service to Groupon, the company has aimed their lawsuits at competitors who threaten their business.

Mobgob and Scoopon have both been targeted and Groupon currently has lawsuits against them. Groupon claims their business has been hurt due to patent infringement to these lesser-known websites, which has caused harm to their business, reputation, market and goodwill. As was the case in the suit against Mobgob, Groupon hopes to gain control of the offending company’s website in order to eliminate it. While Groupon owns a patent that it claims protects this process, can they really claim right to an idea that has been in practice for some time?

Collective buying is nothing new.  BJ’s, Sam’s Club and Costco are businesses that are based upon this concept; consumers pay lower prices when buying as a group than they would individually. And really, every modern day big box store or discount website is based upon the same principle. Buying a large amount of a product and selling it at a relatively low price ensures sales for the manufacturer, a profit to the company serving as the middleman, and a bargain for the consumer.

Companies like Groupon and their competitors simply take this same process one step further. Creating local markets that allow customers to collectively join in on good deals has simply been a natural progression of business. This is exactly what a consumer is doing when shopping at any large, corporate owned store.  A person could even argue that the modern American consumer business industry is based on the collective buying process.  In Groupon’s case, the consumer is able to get a good deal on the desired product because there is no guarantee that the proposed deal will go through. If there are not enough buyers interested in a particular deal, it will not happen.

However, this same process occurs in all forms of business.  When a particular product does not draw enough sales it will eventually become unavailable.  While this process could take several months in normal circumstances, collective buying daily-deal websites simply allow the deal to expire at an expected time, rather than having the product in question become less available, until it is eventually no longer carried. When done online or at a local big box store, collective buying is, quite simply, a natural progression of business.

Submitted by Brain Good at DealDoc.com Daily Deals

LivingSocial Gains Major Ground on Groupon

The numbers tell a powerful story. Online daily deals website LivingSocial had an 80% increase in traffic two weeks ago, while Groupon.com took a 20% hit in the same department. That begs the question: Is there a new kid on the block to be reckoned with?

No one really knows just yet. The harsh reality is that anyone can come in, get viral, and dominate the online deal market in less than a day or two. That’s just how open the market is to penetration through marketing and rock-bottom prices. Groupon turned down an offer of $5 to $6 billion dollars from Google after sprouting up at lightning speed. Will they begin to re-think the decision they made? It will be interesting to see what transpires in the days and weeks to come. Facebook is also rumoured to be in the market of deal offerings, and you know what that means.

LivingSocial went viral with their offer of $20 Amazon gift certificates for $10, since they got the word out, and people bought in from across the globe. All it takes is one high-profile deal to do wonders for an online business, and here’s a stellar example. LivingSocial claims to be on track to overtake Groupon in 2011, and by all accounts they mean business.

Perhaps LivingSocial will get an acquisition offer as Google tries to build up Google Offers. That may prove to be a deal that will be too good to pass up, especially if the timing is right. That said, Google just might decide to go it alone, based upon the search engine giant’s nearly $200 billion market cap. They could surely dominate the scene if they chose to.

LivingSocial looks to increase the number of people purchasing online from local merchants in their area. After all, user confidence with online payment is at an all-time high, and social media channels have unlocked a global door for reaching huge audiences very rapidly. When you add in the fact that customers have become increasingly disconnected with brick and mortar attempts to offer deals, a powerful storm of online dominance is becoming the norm in today’s real-time society. It just makes sense to evolve and conquer in the world of online deals.

To further bolster their claim, LivingSocial has an in-house team that has already worked with tens of thousands of merchants to find win-win strategies for each of them. The ball is rolling, and in fact, it’s crushing the competition. 2011 will unveil the strategies put in place by those who want to compete in the online arena, and we’ll be there each step of the way.

The Excitement Of Daily Deals - Get them while they're HOT!

It does not matter who we are, whether of the haves or have nots, there’s nothing like a good deal. And it makes sense: why spend more for an item when it can be bought at a reduced price. That’s why we are excited about sales and discounts on household products, services and more. That’s why stores with heavily discounted items are filled with blurry eyed consumers lined up in the wee of the morning hours before their store opens hoping to grab huge savings before all the deals ran out.  That’s why on Christmas Eve, stores are filled with deal focused consumers sporting furrowed brows and zombie-like stares making their way through the crowd to get that attractively priced doohickey before it disappeared.  I remember buying a new, heavily technologically laden laptop at full price because it was the latest and best at that time, but guess what?   Technology advances each and every day. The laptop I bought at full price was reduced by 50% a few months later.  From that day forward I swore to myself to never to buy any item at full price. I now look  for deals that will keep money in my pocket. 

And so, over the past few years, daily deal websites have been popping up all over.   These deals, many of them local and some specific to certain counties, assist in helping you spend less on products and services like shopping, restaurants, spas, gyms and more  in the city or town where you live.   Most of these daily deals save you 50% - 90% off the normal price. Talk about savings!   Most of these daily deals have a shelf life, so the idea is: grab them while they're hot!   It’s a boon for participating businesses because it allows their products or services to reach those who normally wouldn’t have heard of them.  And once these new consumers visit it allows businesses to form a bond and hopefully brand loyalty.  But it can have its drawbacks.  You may have heard of some companies that got so much new business thanks to these daily deals they couldn't meet the demand!  But it’s so easy for consumers like us to get involved.  Sometimes it takes signing up to a website or an app and wahlah! Daily Deals right to your inbox, right into your email.  Or you can go directly to their website and see what’s the latest and grab them - before the deals run out.    

The biggest and most popular daily deals site is Groupon.   Groupon, though, has an interesting concept:   According to Wikipedia, “The company offers one "Groupon" per day in each of the markets it serves. The Groupon works as an assurance contract using The Point's platform: if a certain number of people sign up for the offer, then the deal becomes available to all; if the predetermined minimum is not met, no one gets the deal that day. This reduces risk for retailers, who can treat the coupons as quantity discounts as well as sales promotion tools.”  Groupon was also noted as being one of the fastest growing daily deal sites.  And to show how popular and trending these daily deals are, Wikipedia states, “On November 30, 2010, it was reported that Google offered $5.3 billion with a $700 million earnout to acquire Groupon,”  but they decided to ignore Google's offer and pursue another direction.

Since consumers are always looking for a daily deal or deal of the day, many online and offline entities are starting and experimenting with their own daily deal offers. Apart from Groupon, Tippr, Google and other companies are focusing on getting daily deals offers to consumers.  Even my local NY Daily News newspaper has a deal of the day emblazoned on the front page.  And If you do a search for “daily deals”  you’ll find an amazing amount of new websites providing daily deals for your city.  So, no matter where you live there’s a daily deal for you.    

But with all these daily deals sites providing daily deals it makes sense that someone would come up with a way to corral all those daily deals around the internet and put them onto one site.  One website that does this is daily deals aggregate, http://www.dealdoc.com/. Dealdoc.com is to daily deals what Kayak is to online travel.  DealDoc pulls deals from 300+ daily deals websites in over 200 cities and puts them on their website.  So, no matter where you live or wherever you’re traveling to in the United States and even abroad, by signing up to this free site, you can find daily deals no matter where you are.   

So, with daily deals sites around you don’t have to wait for a special occasion to get discounts from retailers anymore. By making use of daily deals you not only save money throughout the year, you also have opportunities to try new amusement parks, restaurants,  outdoor activities, spas and more at 50% - 90% off.   Now that’s a great deal.