Some retailers celebrate Presidents' Day by offering promotions; Groupon celebrated by trolling the Internet.
On Friday, Groupon announced plans to give customers $10 off $40 local deals. The offer was intended to honor Alexander Hamilton, the face on the $10 bill and, according to the press release, "undeniably one of our greatest presidents."
There's just one problem: Hamilton was never president. That prompted dozens of articles noting that Groupon had made a big "gaffe" by "mistakenly" listing him as a president. At least one paper, USA Today, appeared to be surprised that the release hadn't been taken down two days later.
On Monday, the company told Mashable that the release was intended to be a tongue-in-cheek marketing stunt.
"Most Presidents' Day promotions make people fall asleep, so we wanted to do something different that was in line with our brand and sense of humor that got people talking and writing about the promotion," the spokesperson said.
In addition to all the news stories, there were more than 5,000 tweets about the stunt, according to Groupon. Although many of those tweets weren't exactly positive:
Sounds like @Groupon is trying to parlay their "President's Day" Alexander Hamilton offer into an of-course-we-knew-that moment. Hard fail.— Ron Harris (@Journorati) February 16, 2014
Does anyone at #Groupon know anything about US history? Idiots http://t.co/EVEMVHAuXd— Thad Puckett (@ThadPuckett) February 17, 2014
The people at @Groupon are idiots. But then again, that's probably not breaking news. http://t.co/UH6hagYfdn— Charles Apple (@charlesapple) February 17, 2014
The team at Groupon doesn't seem to mind the negative reaction. In fact, the rep touted some of the hate-mail the company received, including, at least according to the company, one e-mail from someone at the White House with the subject line "idiots."
"It was an overwhelming success," the rep said.
