“I thought, ‘Oh neat, this is a cool ad in the middle of the Super Bowl. How thoughtful,’ ” said Fuentes, 42, of New York. “And then all of a sudden, it was like I got punched in the face.”
The “punch” came via the ad’s cut to actor Timothy Hutton, who suddenly ended his plaintive monologue about how Tibet’s “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.
Chicago-based 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.
Ryan McKeen, a 30-year-old from Connecticut, 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 Tibet Fund.
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 Tibet 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 Andrew Mason responded to the criticism in a Monday blog post, explaining that the 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.
Gene Grabowski, a crisis management expert and senior vice president of Levick Strategic Communications in New York, 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.
Chicago marketing company Alterian, 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 Alterian’s index.
“We only had three brands that had more negative conversations than positive,” said Scott Briggs, Alterian’s 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 Tibet 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 Tibet Fund could not be reached for comment. Other organizations involved in the “Save the Money” campaign have shown support for Groupon. Greenpeace re-posted its ad featuring Cuba Gooding Jr. on its website and said it is “happily participating in the campaign.”
Another spot, which was tied to the Rainforest Action Network, featured Elizabeth Hurley talking about deforestation and then suddenly changing the topic to a discount on a Brazilian wax.
Nell Greenberg, a spokeswoman for the Rainforest 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 Tibet 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 $100,000 for Rainforest Action Network, the Tibet Fund and buildOn, a group that constructs schools in developing countries. In the case of Greenpeace, donations will be matched by up to $100,000 in Groupon credit.
“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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