First things first, I personally thought the ad was terrible and I feel like the biggest problem with the ad is its lack of information about Groupon’s efforts to help Tibet, by matching donations to Greenpeace. But I’m thinking they knew that at the time. Groupon wanted a controversial commercial and CP +B gave them that. Maybe they knew that after the commercial everyone was going to go Google what Groupon was, and that was the type of publicity they wanted.
I think they knew the commercial was going to spark controversy but at the same time I think they knew that when it was all said and done generally people would only think that they poorly executed a commercial. Because later on the public would realize that Groupon wasn’t the bad guy and that they were donating their own profits to those causes. So basically they generated a ton of press for having a bad commercial (which is forgivable, not being a bad company) and now everyone knows what Groupon is and this whole “problem” was actually was successful for Groupon.
Ethically, they should have never talked about Tibet in the light that they did. Personally, I don’t understand how companies ever think making a joke out of world problems is funny. Remember the Cole Haan Twitter fiasco?
As far as CP+B, is concerned, they got a beating. I find it interesting that Groupon stood by them at first, which generated a lot of press and then after things started to die down, Groupon gets back in the press by publicly firing the agency and saying they trusted them too much. Not sure if I’m right on this one, but I’m still buying Groupons and if anything the commercial reminded to actually open those emails instead of deleting them. emilyD
