Groupon's Blunder

Although it is known that generally speaking, Caucasian men directly or indirectly wield the most power in the West, the need for diversity in every sphere especially in the US, the world's melting pot, cannot be overemphasized, because it represents the real world we live in. I was recently reminded of this when Groupon's Super Bowl XLV commercial, in which actor Timothy Hutton makes a plea for the Tibetans before stating: "But they still whip up an amazing fish curry,"which was very culturally insensitive Tibetans and their plight, and other groups who have had similar experiences was aired. That was really an "oops" moment, AKA a major "snafu" for Goupon and the ad agency who created the commercial.

I can understand and appreciate some well meaning young bright, socially conscious advertising executive coming up with the concept, the Ad directors approving and showing it to the client, Groupon, the client who okayed it and the many more people from different teams from the script writers and directors, to the producers and actors all jumping onboard to produce it, but did anyone really sit down to think about what they were doing? I'm sure no Tibetan or even a culturally sensitive minority in a position of power, who was able to share his or her honest perspective and opinion, was part of all the many teams that worked on it. So it's not surprising that they created the commercial they did and received the subsequent negative reactions they did.

Although Groupon said they were trying to highlight the plight of the Tibetans, it came across like they were mocking it by saying to viewers Tibetans have problems, but you, Super Bowl Commercial watchers, have good lives, which you can make even better eating the food they cook, while enjoying Groupon's coupons. There was no call to action to do anything to help the Tibetans or their cause.

Where was Groupon when the Dalai Lama visited America on his tour? They were no where to be found. Did they think to promote or sponsor him or his peace promoting tour? Nope. And after all the hoopla, instead of stating politically gracious words such as, “We had good motives that were unfortunately lost in translation and xxx is what we will do to fix it,” their response was defensive of their commercial and philanthropic stance in a, "You all just don't get it" manner, when in reality they are definitely the ones that don't get it. Honestly, I can understand them defending it, because as you know, people don’t like accepting their wrong doings and they were just trying to protect/save their jobs. However, later, Groupon's founder, Andrew Mason apologized and pulled the ad.

This is another reminder to everyone that we live in a very diverse, multi-cultural and multi-ethnic world, so diversity of race, ethnicity, experiences, thought processes, values and perceptions are a necessity, not a luxury in any organization, be it large or small, in the world we live in today. Even if they don't have a diverse staff, if Groupon and the Ad agency were smart, they should have put a call out on Craig's List for diverse people to form focus groups to screen the commercial and make recommendations, and they would have avoided their perceived insensitivity and the negative response they received.

I hope other companies and ad agencies will use this as a lesson to realize that viewing the world through a narrow lens isn't productive and that their duty is to make more culturally sensitive content including commercials that appeal to all and offends none.