It can be one of a company’s worst nightmares – they put out an online coupon code meant for specific customers, offering deep discounts, and the entire internet gets a hold of it. Suddenly, a targeted discount becomes a huge liability, as shoppers scramble for the deal before anyone in the company knows what hit them.
Unless, of course, that was the plan all along.
A travel site recently flipped the above scenario on its head, “leaking” a coupon code that was not actually a leak at all, but a clever marketing stunt. And it worked.
Cleartrip is an India-based online travel agency, similar to Expedia and Priceline here in the U.S. It regularly offers plenty of coupon codes, so customers know they never have to pay full price. But it’s hard to get customers excited about a discount when they know there’s always one available.
So Cleartrip decided to create a coupon code that looked too good to be true. The coupon “CTEMPLOYEE” provided an instant 20% discount. But was it a secret code meant just for Cleartrip employees? The internet sure thought so when the code started spreading among online deal-seekers.
“Cleartrip’s employee code leaked! Type CTEMPLOYEE in the coupon code section when booking your flight. You’re welcome!” one social media post proclaimed. “Cleartrip really left the back door open. Use CTEMPLOYEE to get some crazy discounts on flights,” another advised. “Looks like Cleartrip’s secret code is working for everyone!” another announced.
It’s unclear whether the above posts were made by legitimate deal-seekers, or Cleartrip plants – because the coupon wasn’t a leaked employee code at all. It was purposely designed by Cleartrip to look like a big mistake.
And nothing cuts through the noise of humdrum promotions than an offer that lets shoppers think they’d better act fast, to snag a great deal before the company catches on and kills it.
After the coupon code made the rounds for a few days, Cleartrip fessed up. Its Chief Business & Growth Officer Manjari Singhal admitted that “we ‘accidentally’ leaked our ‘exclusive’ employee coupon code to the world.” By making shoppers think they had scored a secret deal, “everyone got to feel like an insider,” Singhal continued.
And did it work? It seems so. “The response was electric!” Singhal said. “Thousands of trips booked, codes shared among friends, and an incredible reminder of the joy travel brings when it feels just a little more accessible.”
Part of the reason that online deal-seekers seemed willing to believe this was a leak, was because they’ve seen plenty of coupons that really were. Among the most notorious examples in recent years was a coupon for the online sneakers-and-streetwear resale site StockX that offered $100 off a $100+ purchase back in 2022. StockX never confirmed for whom that generous coupon code was actually meant, but the entire internet found out about it, and it was used more than 50,000 times before the company shut it down and cancelled the orders.
A few years earlier, a similar glitch hit the premium skin care company California Baby. A coupon code for $75 off a $75+ purchase that was meant for members of their referral program got out into the wild, and shoppers gleefully used it to place orders for an entire weekend. When employees came back to work on Monday morning and saw what had happened, all orders placed all weekend were cancelled.
And just a few months before that, the beauty retailer Sephora ran a contest in which one of the top prizes was a coupon code for $88 off a $100 purchase. Unfortunately for the company, the simple code “88OFF” worked for anybody, not just the contest winners. So the code spread online like wildfire, before Sephora – you guessed it – invalidated the coupon and cancelled all orders using it.
In this most recent case, many Cleartrip shoppers figured they’d better act fast, and scrambled to place orders using the “leaked” coupon code before the company caught on and cancelled their trips. Of course, the company did no such thing.
“Everyone thought they’d outsmarted the system, and booked away like insiders,” social media marketer Isha Jain commented. But what it really was, was “strategic storytelling disguised as a leak.” No advertising, no paid promotions, no influencer marketing, just “FOMO, curiosity, and clever timing,” Jain continued. “And that’s how you turn a campaign into a cultural moment.”
Many companies have learned the hard way that trying to be generous to insiders only, sometimes doesn’t pay off. In this case, pretending to be generous to insiders only, paid off better than anyone might have expected.
Image source: Mockuper
