Unless you live on Pluto and you’re just in town for the temple fairs you probably know the situation with Groupon and their notorious Tibet ad. From within the China echo chamber it can be tricky to calibrate your reaction to this kind of thing. Those of us who live here are prone to flinch at things that people living in America don’t give a damn about. But we often learn that flinch reaction the hard way, over years of doing business in China and wrestling the occasional PR crisis.
Groupon, it turns out, is trying to build a business in China. Their well-established irreverent sense of humor aside, you’d think they’d thus have some radar for the things that are likely to get them in trouble here. Media 101: In 2011, all media is global media. Culture 101: What plays in Chicago (where Groupon is from) may not play in Changchun, as it were. Think Tommy Lee Jones in the first Men in Black: “We in the FBI have no sense of humor that we are aware of.” Now replace him in your head with just about any Chinese government bureaucracy, and consider the direct and substantial influence that those bureaucracies have over the fortunes of businesses operating in China. And this doesn’t even get into the reaction of Groupon’s potential customers here. They do have a sense of humor, but not necessarily the same one as customers back home.
I’m not going to get into the details of how screwed Groupon may or may not be in China. For that, read posts from ChinaGeeks, Techrice or Shanghaiist. Suffice to say that most of us who live and work here in China think the Tibet ad increased the risks to any mainland China operation that Groupon launches.
The question that preoccupies me as a China PR man is, where was the PR team in all of this? One of the things I learned in my years at Burson-Marsteller was that a good PR person is one who can, among other things, look at business decisions being made and tell the management what those decisions will mean for the company’s reputation among all the audiences that matter. A good senior PR person will use a team and agencies to extend that ability beyond what any one person can cover, and be able to bring that information back to management at a level that can shape decisions. If a company is just using PR to pitch journalists and grind out press releases, then it is missing a big part of the point of a good PR team.
In the best of all possible worlds, Groupon would have had a senior PR person who was aware of the company’s China plans, was tied into what the marketing group was doing, and was smart enough to spot a risk and bring it to management ahead of time. Message: Run this ad if you want, but it will create real risks in China at exactly the wrong time. Maybe this happened. Maybe the company went ahead anyway, in which case they assumed those risks with their eyes open. Maybe it didn’t happen at all. In the end, they went to market with an ad that has real potential to damage their business ambitions.
The point here is not to change Groupon’s irreverent corporate personality, but to tune that personality so that it stays an asset as they grow into a global company. Startups often grow their businesses and ambitions faster than their PR capabilities. I have personal experience with this from before I was in PR, when I worked as a project manager and operations chief in a fast growing e-commerce company in Singapore in the late nineties. I thought the PR woman’s main contribution was to introduce bureaucracy and slow down things we had to do right now, and I was full of disdain for her and her work. Nothing like ten years on the opposite side of the tracks to broaden your perspective. I’ve often thought I should write her a letter to apologize for the former me. Come to think of it, some of my prior girlfriends could use similar letters. If any of you are reading this, I’m sorry.
I have no idea how Groupon runs its PR. I do know that Venturebeat offered them some pretty sound advice on PR late last year, and an industry blogger critiqued their response to the ads in the US. I also know that in the wake of the Tibet issue, they’ve expanded Fleischman-Hillard’s remit from Hong Kong to mainland China, which is better than nothing but a bit after the fact and in a galaxy far, far away from headquarters. If you’re entertaining multibillion dollar buyout offers from Google, planning a public listing, and hoping to expand your business in China, you’d better put some really strong PR people right at the center of management decision making. And if you’re going to try to build your business in China, you’d better have someone on the ground here in the mainland who knows what the company is up to and who has the phone number of the key decision makers in the US.
If Groupon wasn’t doing it before, now would be a good time to start.
Update: Word on the street (by which I mean Twitter) is that Groupon is also suing this lookalike site in China. Hope they have a China trademark registered.
The Groupon website linked its Tibet ad to a charity called The Tibet Fund, where the homepage includes a message from the Dalai Lama. This action, not the ad, would seem more indicative of the kind of PR environment at Groupon.
Cheers, Boyce
Or indicative of the management’s priorities. The fund isn’t directly connected with Groupon, and its agenda is couched in very diplomatic terms, but anything that implies that the Chinese government isn’t managing the Tibetan region well is likely to raise official eyebrows here. But I think the root problem is the same: Not making the link between China business goals and decisions that probably looked fairly innocent in the US at the time. The next problem will be fallout from distancing themselves from The Tibet Fund or being seen, like some companies before them, to have to choose between their principles (or the ones that people project on them) and business priorities. Will be interesting to see how it goes.
Seems like common sense and occasionally reading the news should have prevented this.
who knows.
Maybe it’s for the better ,i think. Gov’s face is overrated.
Although ‘gaffe’ is an appropriate term for Groupon ad, that is only true because, as you point out, China is, well, China. Not only do those that hold power over whether the likes of Groupon succeed in China lack humour, they also throw prescribed tantrums with suitable doses of exaggerated insult – all part of the psychological game of making the guy on the other side of the table feel like he owes you one. Chinese people aren’t born with those chips on their shoulders; they’re carefully nurtured – if not implanted – to the detriment of the unwitting foreigner trying to get a piece of the action.
Simplest solution is for the Chinese to grow up; but don’t expect to see that anytime soon.
You nailed it: “If a company is just using PR to pitch journalists and grind out press releases, then it is missing a big part of the point of a good PR team.” The mistakes of an inadequate cultural awareness I think. How the content was going to be perceived by the various audiences. That’s what they missed here. Could have been avoided so easily with a little CQ.
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What I find fascinating about the add is that they were able to offend both sides of the debate in just 30 seconds! A rather clever way to cull your target market, really.
But the real problem? Himalayan fish curry not only sounds as appetizing as Wisconsin Clam Chowder but is indicative of some serious climate change issues.
Although ‘gaffe’ is an appropriate term for Groupon ad, that is only true because, as you point out, China is, well, China. Not only do those that hold power over whether the likes of Groupon succeed in China lack humour, they also throw prescribed tantrums with suitable doses of exaggerated insult….
Stuart,
The problem with your rant about China lacking humor is that there is no official response from the Chinese government denouncing this ad.
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