Those who watched this past Sunday’s Superbowl may have noticed a general lack in originality when it came to the advertisements. As a child, I recall exciting and stimulating commercials featuring Michael Jordan and Larry bird shooting off of Chicago skyscrapers, beer drinking frogs, and a large linebacker tackling office employees.
But for what this year’s Superbowl lacked in quality, they made up for with controversy. Groupon.com, which is a web-based coupon directory service, launched their new advertising campaign. Their first ad, featuring Cuba Gooding Jr. and his take on whale watching was stunning and somewhat controversial.
This ad was followed by another ad, featuring Academy-Award winning child actor Timothy Hutton as a diner at a Chicago-based Himalayan restaurant. What made the ad controversial was not Hutton’s lack of relevance, though it is slightly disgusting, but rather the commercial’s obvious exploitation of the human rights issues facing the Tibetan people.
As someone who spent the fall living in Tibet, I was very turned off the first time I saw this. It bothered me not just because it tore apart a country striving to exceed beyond its current state, but poked fun at perhaps one of the most publicized cultural wars of my lifetime. They chose obvious important religious and cultural locations to display in the ad (Lhasa, Mt. Everest. etc) with the hopes of getting a rise out of the viewers.
The question is were these commercials done with the intent of being controversial? Was the purpose to stun with the intent of advocating social awareness? Or was this controversy part of a grand scheme to attract attention under the guise that any press is good press?
Aside from being a socially insensitive graveyard for B-list actors, Groupon.com has done a great job of making themselves relevant in the online rat race for attention.
