Quit Your Bitching- Groupon Rocked Your Faces.

Normally I keep this blog Advertising Free, however my mentors during my CP+B internship worked on the Groupon spots for last night's superbowl and they rock my face.

People are pissed and talking, and I love it. Why? Because every comment people make is free advertising.

And they are pissed for no good reason. Did anybody donate, care about, or talk about any of these charities prior to the commercials?

Nope.

Do they actually care about these charities now?

Nah.

Whats the probability they are going to go donate to the whales, tibet or the rainforest?

No likely.

Why all the craziness then? Because people like to get mad in the masses, that's it. Nobody can really be offended because nobody did anything in the first place, and while Groupon's first priority is definitely not helping these charities, they at least threw the links up there and set up a donation program- more effort than 105.5 million out of the 106 million who watched the superbowl will probably do.

Living Social, Google's version of Groupon, had a commercial in the beginning of the game. I bet 99% of the people don't remember it, and if they go to a group site the one they are going to go to is Groupon simply out of memory.

People are saying it's damaging to Groupon as a brand, but the reality is people are still signing up for it, and after the ad last night there was an increase in the number of Groupon users, not a decrease.

While I was at CP+B, I had the pleasure to work on Groupon. Nothing I did ended up getting produced or going far, in fact the height of my achievements was a print ad that made "the wall" which I considered something to be proud of. Out of every client I worked on, Groupon was by far the hardest, and the only client I didn't get anything produced or even sent to the client for. Out of that experience, I can say this (and I know the other Copy intern who worked with me agrees)- It's better to have fun, work on something a little evil, and get everyone talking than to work on crap and never be noticed.

You can say it was tasteless, but let's be real here- the half time show was a billion times more offensive. Fergie sounded like a dying cat, Slash is somewhere killing himself while Axl is stabbing himself in his grave, and Usher saved the day and they should have let him lipsync for the entire show.