Groupon, a popular website which offers daily deals to major geographic markets all over the world, has struck up a controversy due to its Super Bowl Ad, which spotlights Tibet’s social problems in a serious manner, and then dismissing the problem by saying how beneficial it is that they received a deal from Groupon which gets them Tibetan food for half the price.
A blog entry on Socialnomics phrased it well when it said that “a social media company [Groupon] didn’t understand the social media backlash it could receive by running a culturally insensitive advertisement during the Super Bowl”. Despite a letter from Groupon CEO explaining the reasons for running this commercial, claiming that “they would bring more funding and support to the highlighted causes” by raising awareness, numerous people upset by the trivial nature of the commercial continue to voice their complaints on twitter, facebook, and other means of social media.
As a regular Groupon customer, I was shocked to see the commercial and simply could not understand why they had to make the ad in that fashion. Who was their target market, and why did they think that poking fun at Tibet’s problems would entice them to buy from Groupon?
Word of mouth is a powerful social influence, which can be a good or a bad thing. Sure, perhaps the commercial was a spoof which should be taken light-heartedly, but was it worth the risk for Groupon to potentially gain a bad reputation? I don’t think so.
[Oh goodness, I was just talking about this with Kevin today.]
Anyways, the execution could have been a bit better, but I found the campaign actually effective in terms of what they were trying to achieve (more awareness for the issues and them). I don’t know if they were actually aiming for the ads to generate more revenue. In any case, because of these ads, people were suddenly thinking about all these issues again (Tibet, Whale conservation, Forest Conservation).
Also, they’re running a promotion along with this, where you donate money to the above charities, and you get the same amount credited towards your Groupon account. I’ve already donated $30 to the forest conservation fund, and now I have $30 worth of Groupon credit. Win win situation for all sides around (except for the bad publicity on Groupon’s part, but hey, I’m fine with charities getting money)
Though you may want to keep in mind that I don’t get offended easily, and I actually laughed when I saw those ads. For me, the “offence” was so over the top, that I took it as something extremely sarcastic and saw that they were trying to promote the charities immediately.