Groupon: That Tibet Super Bowl Ad

Groupon: That Tibet Super Bowl Ad

Wow, that was bad in so many ways...

Because I didn't bother to even watch the Super Bowl, I had no idea this ad was even aired. Plus, I've never heard of the Groupon before this controversy. After watching this ad, even I have to say this is a bit tasteless and not even that funny. What were they thinking? You paid 3 million for this tasteless and unfunny ad, Groupon?

Now, I can see this being a spoof ad on GTA or Robocop, but a real company doing it is a little bit much.

People have been blogging and tweeting about this ad. Considering that people are dying under the strong rule of China in Tibet, this is really a subject for a company to take lightly, and making it unfunny. Plus, do you really want to anger the wave of Hipster Twitter accounts?

Anyway, Groupon has come out to explain and apologize. The good that came out of this is that Groupon is actually doing something about it in a positive manner.

From their blog, ((We took this approach knowing that, if anything, they would bring more funding and support to the highlighted causes. That’s why organizations like Greenpeace, buildOn, The Tibet Fund, and the Rainforest Action Network all decided to throw their support behind the campaign (read Greenpeace’s blog post here). In fact, the feedback led us to make changes to the end of our ads that further encourage our fundraising. To that point, if the ads affected you, we hope you’ll head over to SaveTheMoney.org and make a donation (which we’ll match) – we’re hoping to raise a lot of money.

The last thing we wanted was to offend our customers – it’s bad business and it’s not where our hearts are.))

So, I guess you can turn poop into gold.