Drama behind the 'irony curtain' as Groupon pulls US commercials
Groupon has given up on the storm of controversy over its Super Bowl advertising - and said sorry.
The online coupon company ran three ads last Sunday starring Liz Hurley, Cuba Gooding Jr. and Timothy Hutton - one before the Super Bowl, one during the game and one after. The ads were a supposed parody of celebrity charity endorsements but people complained the spots on the Brazilian rain forest, the plight of whales and Tibet were in poor taste.
At first Groupon explained that it was actually raising money for the charities - half a million dollars in all (and the charities came to its defence) but now it's pulled the ads.
CEO Andrew Mason wrote on the Groupon blog : "Five days have passed since the Super Bowl, and one thing is clear – our ads offended a lot of people. Tuesday I posted an explanation, but as many of you have pointed out, if an ad requires an explanation, that means it didn't work.
"We hate that we offended people, and we're very sorry that we did – it's the last thing we wanted. We've listened to your feedback, and since we don't see the point in continuing to anger people, we're pulling the ads . . . ."
"We will run something less polarising instead. We thought we were poking fun at ourselves, but clearly the execution was off and the joke didn’t come through. I personally take responsibility; although we worked with a professional ad agency, in the end, it was my decision to run the ads."
So that's that. Humour in America is a dangerous thing.
The producers of Top Gear are also not taking any chances with the American sense of humour. Jokes about Mexico, which caused controversy when an episode of the show was shown in the UK, has been cut from an American version The Drum reported last night.