Groupon’s response to the negative publicity is foolish spin that tries to explain the ad’s motive, but just further insults us by claiming that we didn’t “get it”.   If you have to post an explanation of your ad, and try to convince us that it is actually brilliant irony designed to actually help the causes you are trivializing, then you produced a bad ad.  

We understand that the first rule of advertising is to get noticed.   If you don’t get attention, then it doesn’t matter what your ad says.   It’s a tree falling in a forest.  But you are airing in the Super Bowl – so you have already addressed the issue of getting attention.  There is great benefit, but also great risk to advertising in the Super Bowl, especially when you roll out a clunker.

There is no grander scale for advertising than the Super Bowl because of sheer reach (duh).  Budweiser takes out Super Bowl ads to reinforce the image that they are “beer guys that make cheeky commercials.” Chrysler is a longstanding brand that wanted to tell the world that they’re back on the map with a hot new car with an edgy pitchman (Eminem - a choice that can be debated - but seemed to have paid off).  BMW is a well-established brand that used their spot to introduce advanced-diesel. Despite how popular Groupon thought they were going into the game, we would argue that many viewers weren’t entirely familiar with the company to begin with. Others likely had never heard of it. Groupon was successfully offended the audience that they were trying to reach out to.

We appreciate advertising that tries to be edgy as a way to get attention, and generate earned media buzz and water cooler discussion.   The biggest problem is – being edgy is tricky – and can easily wade into the waters of being offensive.   No amount of blogging after the fact is going to make people feel any better about the ads or Groupon as a company.  

Putting out edgy advertising that reasonable people might judge as offensive needs to done very carefully, by a well-established advertiser that has brand equity.   Groupon does not have broad awareness or a reservoir of goodwill.   Coming out of the box on an international scale with these ads was a mistake.   You only have one chance to make a first impression.