“I thought, ‘Oh neat, this is a cool ad in the middle of the Super Bowl. How thoughtful,’ ” said Fuentes, 42, of
The “punch” came via the ad’s cut to actor
“very culture is in jeopardy” to state brightly that Tibetans “still
whip up an amazing fish curry,” and how he saved money at a Chicago
Himalayan restaurant via online daily deal provider Groupon.
Groupon chose the Super Bowl to make its first foray into television
commercials after two years of word-of-mouth and online advertising.
Its debut — on the largest imaginable platform — turned out to be the
biggest flop of the night, angering consumers and marking a rare
branding misstep for a hip startup that counts irreverent humor as one
of its hallmarks.
The backlash was felt immediately on social media
platforms such as Twitter. Many consumers flocked to Groupon’s official
blog site, where they used words like “tasteless,” “tacky,” “vulgar”
and “detestable” to describe the ad.
tweeted his disdain and unsubscribed from Groupon in protest. “I sat
there and watched the ad, and I was just stunned,” he said.
A company whose business model relies on viral
marketing among a tech-savvy demographic found itself at the center of
a public relations maelstrom.
Groupon intended its Super Bowl ads to be a send-up
of pompous, celebrity-narrated public service announcements. More
importantly, the company wanted the commercials to tell viewers about
“Save The Money,” a philanthropic campaign to raise money for a group
of partner organizations, including the
But in a critical gaffe, the commercials made no
references to the charities or the Web address for “Save The Money.”
This omission made many viewers feel like Groupon was exploiting human
rights problems in
as a glib way to gain customers. On Monday morning, Fuentes dug a
Groupon e-mail out of his trash folder and clicked on the “Unsubscribe”
link.
“There are things we can’t control, but one of the
things we can is where, how and with whom we spend our money,” said
Fuentes, who doesn’t consider himself an activist. “So I’m voting with
my wallet.”
Groupon Chief Executive
ads were meant to draw attention to philanthropic causes by humorously
highlighting “the often trivial nature of stuff on Groupon when
juxtaposed against bigger world issues.”
Mason said Groupon is tweaking the end of the ads to
make the call for donations clearer. But he defended the spots against
criticism that they made light of serious humanitarian and
environmental issues.
“We would never have run these ads if we thought
they trivialized the causes — even if we didn’t take them as seriously
as we do, what type of company would go out of their way to be so
antagonistic?” Mason wrote.
The ad agency behind the spots, Crispin Porter Bogusky, referred inquiries to Groupon.
said “consumers and the public will forgive mistakes, but we don’t like
it when a company or organization pretends nothing is wrong or doesn’t
understand why we don’t get the joke.”
And in the case of Groupon’s commercials, the intended humor fell flat.
which measures social media activity around Super Bowl advertisers,
found that Groupon had the most mentions of any advertisers on Sunday
but ranked last in sentiment on
“We only had three brands that had more negative conversations than positive,” said
director of strategic solutions, who headed the Super Bowl study.
“Groupon far and away had the most negative conversations relative to
its (total) number of conversations.”
Whether the backlash over the ads will result in a
tangible hit for Groupon’s subscriber base of 500 million consumers
remains to be seen. The challenge for Groupon is that its brand is
still young and “hasn’t had enough time or enough exposure to build up
a significant balance in the goodwill bank,” Grabowski said. “It could
lose whatever momentum it had rather quickly.”
With competition in the local deals space heating
up, consumers can easily jump ship to a Groupon rival. Chicagoan Wajiw
Casey, for example, said he found the
ad “pretty offensive” and will take a closer look at daily deals from
competitors such as LivingSocial. He remains subscribed to Groupon’s
e-mails for now.
“I really appreciate the type of service they offer,
because it’s a new way of keeping prices low and making things more
competitive,” said Casey, 27. “But when a company like that does
something completely wrong, it’s hard for me to stay with them.”
Representatives of the
not be reached for comment. Other organizations involved in the “Save
the Money” campaign have shown support for Groupon.
Another spot, which was tied to the Rainforest Action Network, featured
Action Network, said the organization was able to look over the script
for its ad before it ran on Sunday.
“Of course we knew it was controversial, but if we
really thought it was crossing a line, we would have said so,”
Greenberg said.
After seeing the ads on Sunday, the environmental
group was disappointed that the “Save The Money” website address didn’t
appear in the commercial and found the
ad to be offensive, Greenberg said. But the organization is still
working with Groupon and grateful for the financial support, especially
as the company is now broadcasting the donations website.
Groupon is contributing matching donations of up to
“It is a tremendous feat for us to get that number
of people to pay attention to a critical issue,” Greenberg said. “In
this day and age, when people are berated with so many media messages
and issues, to get through, you do need to make a stir. It may be
(Groupon’s) ads were controversial, but more people are talking about
deforestation than they were yesterday.”
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(c) 2011, Chicago Tribune.
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