Online retailer Woot.com has incorporated bidding on keywords like “GOOG” and “Google Stock” into their SEM strategy for quite a while now however they just recently updated their campaign to feature some rather unique choices in copy. As a result several tech news blogs have picked up the story, asking users whether or not the new campaign had gone too far with the current state of our economy. Overall the responses have been fairly PRO woot.com, with the exception being in regards to one specific new ad whose headline begins with, “Before you jump out of that window…” On TechCrunch, user Chrisco pointed out an October 7th LA Times article describing a despondent Los Angeles man who’s financial grief led him to kill his wife, mother-in-law and 3 sons, all before ending his own life in his Porter Ranch home. The ad, along with the rest in this new campaign, are below:
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What’s interesting is the relationship that Google and woot! share. Woot! has relied heavily on word-of-mouth to gain popularity however they’ve benefitted greatly from Google’s AdSense program, even to the point of being a focal case-study on the Google AdSense website! Not only that but Woot.com has had a long history of running campaigns targeting users who are searching for Google stock prices, primarily being positive in nature. An example is one shown below, which was taken a little less than two months ago on August 22nd. The copy reads, “Filthy Rich? We’ll help. - Throw away your newfound cash at Woot. You’re welcome.”
Also: If you’ll notice on the header banner for this post, there is another ad that appeared when searching for GOOG (Googles’ stock symbol) - “Looking for God?” It goes to show you that Woot.com isn’t the only one trying to market themselves in this economy.
So, given the current events, do you think that Woot.com has crossed the line with irresponsible ad copy or are people over-reacting to some tonge-in-cheek sales copy?
