This year, the most talked about Superbowl commercial was also the most controversial. One of the “Save the Money” ads from Groupon.com featured actor Timothy Hutton speaking out about the plight of the people in Tibet, before cutting to the punch-line: “They still whip up an amazing fish curry.”
The commercial was one of three advertisements throughout the game, each one beginning as if they were a celebrity-endorsed public service announcement before changing gears to advertise Groupon savings deals.
Groupon.com is a website for local discounts and savings. People choose the savings that they are interested in, but they do not receive the discount unless a certain amount of people agree to buy the same thing.
The ad was immediately criticized for trivializing the problems in Tibet in order to promote the deal-of-the-day website. The overwhelming negative response to the ad was so damaging to the company’s image that they decided to pull the entire $3 million dollar campaign off the air.
This is a classic example of an American audience misunderstanding something and then blowing it out of proportion. The ads were satirical and were meant to poke fun at advertising in general. During the four-hour Superbowl game, audiences were bombarded with advertisements for beer, chips, candy and cars. The purpose of the Groupon ads was to make fun of how insignificant these items are in comparison to the real issues in the world.
What people don’t realize is that Groupon was started by the creators of ThePoint.com, a philanthropic website designed to help people make a difference easily and effectively by creating their own campaigns. Users can ask people to “pledge” to donate money, but no money is actually collected until it reaches a certain predetermined amount of pledges. The average person is often afraid to donate money to a cause because they believe that their money won’t make a difference, but The Point offers people the opportunity to see the difference that their money will make before they pay.
One of the main arguments against these ads is that they are exploiting these worthy causes in order to draw people to their website. However, the company’s homepage contains links to Groupon-style donation pages to charities that are raising awareness for these issues. For example, Groupon offered to match every $15 dollar donation made through their site to the Rainforest Action Network, as long as at least 1000 people agree to donate. Over 1,500 donations were reached in the first day.
It is possible that the tongue-in-cheek nature of these advertisements was lost on an audience that was too preoccupied with Superbowl festivities to really understand them. Prior to this advertisement, a large percentage of the people who were watching the big game probably didn’t know that there was any kind of conflict going on in Tibet at all. The ads sparked conversation about an issue that the average American was not aware of. If each one of the people who complained about the commercial being offensive chose to use that time to donate money or learn about the issue, everyone would be a lot better off.
The advertisements were directed by the comedy filmmaker Christopher Guest, famous for his “mockumentary” films such as Waiting for Guffman and Best in Show. I’m sure that next year these kind of clever advertisements will be replaced by a few more Doritos commercials involving people getting hit in the groin.
Matt Grippi is a junior journalism major and contributing writer for the Daily 49er.
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