Sometimes advertising campaigns are criticized for being extremely controversial or taking things too far. But by being so controversial these advertisements are talked about by everyone and even brought up in the news or on popular blogs. An extremely famous saying goes along the lines of, any publicity is good publicity.

Something I wonder about is how a company takes criticism over their advertisements. Obviously they know when they film a commercial that it may be viewed by the public and critics as perhaps offensive or even just controversial. An example of this is the Groupon ads that ran during the Super bowl. One of which featured Timothy Hutton talking about the perils of Tibet which quickly turns into how to save money on Tibetan food.

How much did this commercial really harm or help Groupon? Yes, some people may have been extremely offended by how they downplayed some major issues in the world but in the end aren’t they also raising awareness of these issues even if they do end with Groupon advertisements. Half of these prime time Super bowl ads were spent talking about some world issues, starring a notable celebrity nonetheless.

I begin to wonder if Groupon knew the kind of response they would get and actually took that into consideration. I know that personally these commercials were a topic of discussion which ensured that anyone who didn’t know what Groupon does before likely does know. They managed to raise awareness of their company with some collateral damage along the way. Who know, maybe this was Groupon’s plan the whole time..