Groupon, LivingSocial Play Mimic Before Super Bowl

Irving Berlin's "Anything You Can Do (I Can Do Better)" has been the elevator music this week at the offices of Groupon and LivingSocial. 

A Groupon-Barnes & Noble nationwide campaign running through Monday night is the latest instance of mimicking between the two companies. The offer, a $20-for-$10 voucher for the book retailer, is identical to the LivingSocial-Amazon deal that ran on Jan. 19 and 20. The latter effort resulted in 1,301,296 vouchers being sold to the tune of $13 million in sales, eclipsing the $11 million a Gap-Groupon deal brought in last August.

Can Groupon take back the sales trophy with the four-day Barnes & Noble campaign?

Meanwhile the two brands will square off during the Super Bowl telecast. Washington D.C.-based LivingSocial hired The Martin Agency to produce a :30 spot, which airs during the last commercial break before kickoff. Groupon tapped Crispin Porter + Bogusky and will run an in-game :30 spot.

While Groupon bought its spot on Jan. 31, it was revealed that LivingSocial finalized its purchase three days later. Indeed, these two brands appear to be constantly raising the stakes.

New Experian Hitwise research says Groupon got 58.5 percent of U.S. visits in the group-sharing sites category in the last week; LivingSocial received 25 percent. During the same period, Groupon accrued 5.5 million visitors to LivingSocial's 2.3 million.

During their TV ads on Sunday, the brands will get in front of roughly 100 million Super Bowl viewers.

Ari Jacoby, CEO of Solve Media, told ClickZ that the group-buying platforms will likely pick up millions of new customers/e-mail subscribers because of the spots. "Advertisers like Groupon can parlay that television success online by reaching audience at critical moments where they are most attentive to ensure optimal brand and message recall," he said.