Capturing the Next-generation Grouponer

SUMMARY

Groupon Student Program was a loyalty discount program. As the only designer on this project, I worked closely with a product manager, a media marketer and other stakeholders to create a brand-new campaign that aimed to target young Gen-Z students.

DATE

2018

The Context

THE PROBLEM

Born after 1995, the new generation of young consumers, are not familiar with Groupon. Most of them don’t think of Groupon as a site for them or only heard about it from their parents. That’s because the current Groupon brand image is little out-dated, and the positioning is geared towards our current audience.

For example, the current landing page only focuses on the discount, but does’t tell you what Groupon actually does. Its out-dated look & feel also fails to attract eyeballs.

What we know

During the discovery phase, the context goes here.

The dark look & feel accentuates the video/imagery and convey a sense of theatricality.

The Process

Rough definitions

In my initial meeting with the stakeholders, we agreed on a basic landing page structure that highlights the value props and top catogories. I also presented moodboards for the team to disccuss the look & feel we’d go for. We were all excited about the possibility of creating an illustrative campaign to break away from our day-to-day stock image driven marketing design style.

visual explorations

Illustrations depicting coupons and savings tend to be cheesy. How might we make using Groupon cool? A unicorn piggy bank of course. It showed the viewer - “saving money can be fun too” - the message we wanted to send to our target audience.

A unicorn piggy bank of course. It showed the viewer - “saving money can be fun too” - the message we wanted to send to our target audience.

establish look&feel

From the “unicorn piggy bank”, I constructed a color palette of gradients & solid colors. It consisted of bright & trendy greens and their complementary colors. The contrast between these highly saturated hues produced a luminously refreshing yet readable aesthetic.

To further define this look & feel, I created 50-60 items to materialize “food”, “drink”, “fun” and “campus”.

Establish look&feel

Using my own pictures, street photography and online resources as reference, I went on to create 6 base characters” in a various movement - radiating energy and passion.

Expand the Set

I built a larger set of unique characters from these base ones by varying poses, hair styles, outfits.

Customize & Scale

In character design, a lot can be expressed through details like outfits and accessories. I catalogued all outfits and accessories into a separate set. This way other designers can expand it with additions like winter/fall outfits and latest fashion trends,

This set of illustrative characters and elements served as the building blocks for the campaign creatives.

Landing Page

The splash page aimed to make a bold impression. It led with our main value prop “extra 25% off food, drink & fun” for students while using other elements as visual teasers.

I optimized illustration composition for different screen sizes.

The rest of the landing page focused on telling the full story - why you should use Groupon and how you could use Groupon.

Here's the final build.

The Campaign