Posted by: Jed Baker

Today, while on my morning web constitutional, a web banner caught my eye:

Wait. What.

There are two things wrong with this ad. The first, and probably less noticeable to most, is the fact that they’ve spelled the St. in St. John’s as Saint. Those of us who live here are used to this by now — even Google Maps doesn’t know how to spell the name of the city we live in. And, frankly, that is an error that I could manage to forgive. The bigger problem for livingsocial is the second, more visible error.

John's

What is going on there? This: this web banner ad is set to run in multiple areas — perhaps all 400 cities that livingsocial is currently active in. Right before it pops up on your computer, a bit of code within the ad checks to see where you are, and then plugs in the name of your city, letting you know they’ve access to “The Best Lobster in Brisbane North” or wherever you are. You look, you click, you buy lobster.

The ad is meant to seem specific to you and your home. You are not supposed to know that it’s just plugging in a city-name from a database of city-names — you’re supposed to be impressed that these people are offering you the best lobster in your city. But this mistake, if you know what’s going on, does exactly the opposite.

To an unprepared computer program, the name of our fair city can be a logical nightmare. Most city names are one word, some are two, and a few are three; relatively simple things to deal with if you are the simplest of computer programs. But throw not only a period but also an apostrophe into the mix – SYSTEM ERROR

With that in mind, it makes sense that the people at livingsocial would plug Saint rather than St. into their database. They probably should have just left the apostrophe out all together: Johns would have been incorrect, but not a flagrant error. But John's is what happens when a program not set up to deal with apostrophes encounters an apostrophe. “'” is a bit of code that will sometimes render as an apostrophe, sometimes not. In this case, it did not. And it’s a glaring tip-off that livingsocial is not catering directly to the people of St. John’s.

There’s a lesson here: if you are trying to trick your potential customers into thinking you are catering directly to them, make sure your code is up to… code.

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3 Responses to “livingsocial you are doing it wrong”

1. Sean says:

   July 7, 2011 at 10:25 am

   Agreed. Very Annoying.
2. Stef says:

   July 8, 2011 at 9:44 am

   I have purposely never even clicked on anything from them for this exact reason. I figure if they can’t get something this simple right, the rest of their operation must be a nightmare too.
3. Dan says:

   July 8, 2011 at 12:15 pm

   Serves you right for fiddling with the name in the first place. You were originally San Joao.