British digital satirists fed up with Groupon’s daily email deluge tried to physically deliver spam to the company’s London office on British television last night. A video clip of the event on YouTube shows how questionable business practices can come home to roost at the worst moment for a struggling company.
The segment, filmed by Don’t Panic for Channel 4, included Israeli performance artist Nimrod Kamer dressed in a SPAM costume trying to gain entrance to the offices.
“I’m spamming you guys for all the spam I got,” Kamer yells at a security guard who won’t let him in the office building in the 1:18 segment.
The motive for the segment, Kamer explained in a brief interview, was “to celebrate the demise of Groupon. The appropriate thing to do was to go to their offices and shove them some homemade spam one last time before they go bankrupt.”
Groupon has been on a downward financial swing lately, prompting ReadWriteWeb to put the Chicago-based company on our DeathWatch list in July. The company has been accused of proliferating spam by its American customers since 2011, prompting British entrepreneur David Maher Roberts to pose the question, “Is Groupon a great way to save or simply spam?”
The Don’t Panic segment has turned up the criticism. The description of the segment uploaded to YouTube says:
Half-price fish pedicures. Car cleaning deals. Bargain boob jobs. If you’ve had emails about any of these ‘amazing’ offers lately, chances are you’ve been spammed by coupon giant Groupon. Don’t Panic decided to take matters into our own hands, and headed down to London Groupon HQ to spam the spammers.
