Judy’s Book recently launched Coupon Looker, which … umm … helps you find coupons.
Pretty obvious.
What is odd is how there is a non-obvious connection to Judy’s Book itself. On the about page, it is (dismissively I think) stated as follows:
couponlooker was started by a few of the folks at Judy’s Book who recognized a need for a fast and efficient coupon search engine.
Huge difference between ‘started by a few of the folks’ and ‘owned and operated by’. The terms page also mentions it once:
The couponlooker site is controlled, operated and administered by couponlooker, a subsidiary of Judy’s Book from its offices within the United States.
Much more obvious – so the question remains, why is Judy’s Book hiding the relationship? Do they believe the Coupon Looker dilutes the brand? Or that Judy’s Book has a negative image in coupons?
One other thing – widgets. I have a lot of experience in building widgets/tools to gather links and branding awareness – but who would put a coupon looker widget on their site? Seems a bit odd. I know they have links listed on the right, but those could easily be seeder ones. Speaking of which – I am
going to research this and get back on this.
6 Responses to Judy’s Book: Why you are hiding?
Erin Friedman
April 19th, 2007 at 2:30 pm
Hi Ahmed,
I wanted to answer some of your questions about CouponLooker:
1. The site was started because we felt that coupon search was an interesting concept we could test and more quickly get to market as a separate domain. It’s entirely possibly that we’ll look to more closely link the two sites together down the road.
2. As for the Widgets, we reached out to shopping, family and personal finance bloggers to tell them about the site prior to our public launch of the site. We invited them to check out the blog and if they felt it was useful to their readers, to add it to their blog and in turn we’d add them to to our blogroll. We had some good response to this but also have seen great organic pick up of the widget as the word has spread.
I’d be happy to chat further about this if you like–drop me an email if you’re interested.
Thanks,
Erin Friedman, Director of Marketing
jda
April 19th, 2007 at 11:23 pm
Well Erin already answered, but I would ask you how you think it would help the average user to know that it was a subsidiary? Is the average JB user hurt by not knowing the extent of the relationship? Would they care? Are they really hiding or just tailoring their message to the audience?
On a side note…. “coupon looker” is a horrible brand name. It says “coupon search was taken and we couldn’t come up with anything clever.”
Ahmed
April 20th, 2007 at 10:31 am
JDA Summed up my point – I can see the need for a new site, but why completely disassociated from JB?
I don’t mind the name though – it tells you exactly what the site does.
bianca
April 20th, 2007 at 11:20 am
to tell you the truth ahmed, other than the fact that my site is basically about fashion, shopping and style – yes, all very heady stuff – i put the widget up on my site purely because if it can assist my readers in getting a few dollars off a purchase, i think that’s a pretty swell reason.
admittedly, the company and their veiled advertising gimmick was lost on me, however taking it down would happen only once it has become clear to me that the service does not work.
[ AHMED's NOTE: I kept this comment in moderation until I completed my follow-up post on CouponLooker. You can read it here: http://www.techsoapbox.com/coupon-looker-widget-a-closer-look/ ]
jda
April 21st, 2007 at 8:21 am
I thought you were saying they were acting in some shady way – which I’d disagree with. They’re not hiding anything that their users need to know.
While I hate the name, your point may be exactly why it is so separated. Many people hear Judy’s Book and still think reviews – there’s no risk of that with coupon looker.
Ahmed
April 21st, 2007 at 9:37 am
Ah no, nothing shady. I’m simply questioning why the new site has no obvious connection to Judy’s Book (eg Google launched GMail.com, but kept a very close connection with it).
So from that question stems why? They must have sat down and discussed why the connection was made non-obvious