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£99 iPhone 4 stunt backfires

Invisible Shield for Apple iPhone 4!“A publicity stunt that offered a new iPhone 4G for £99 has backfired spectacularly on a new UK shopping site, and risks increasing cynicism over a controversial corner of internet marketing,” Andrew Orlowski reports for The Register.

“Groupola is a UK clone of the US group-buying site Groupon, founded by MyVoucherCodes founder Mark Pearson. The idea is to drum up demand for special promotions – which are pulled if not enough punters sign up. Businesses have been keen to go along so far, seeing it as a low-cost way to attract new customers using special one-off offers,” Orlowski reports. “In this case, however, Groupola made some odd decisions.”

Orlowski reports, “Friday rolled round, and the Groupola website went offline – the company claims, because ‘5 million people’ attempted to login in the half hour before 9:30am. The claim was met with a few raised eyebrows. Now consumer site Bitter Wallet finds that the company’s employees have been posing as punters, in an attempt to mitigate the damage.”

Full article here.

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