I’ve been spending the day listening to the negative feedback about our Tibet Super Bowl commercial, and want to take a crack at explaining why we created this campaign. (Crack was a poor choice of words.  He should have been more confident and stand behind his beliefs as opposed to taking a stab at explaining his campaign. Therefore, a much stronger opening sentence would have been…and want to explain why we created the campaign. Also, since he’s a tech guy, he should have made this statement into a video post. That way we could have seen that he was really behind it. That he stands by his words.)

We take the causes we highlighted extremely seriously – that’s why we created this campaign in partnership with many hallmark community organizations, for whom we’re raising money at SaveTheMoney.org. Groupon’s roots are in social activism – we actually began as cause-based website called The Point, and we continue to use Groupon to support local causes with our G-Team initiative. In our two short years as a business, we’ve already raised millions of dollars for national charities like Donors Choose and Kiva. (Good paragraph explaining their stance on causes. Having this paragraph appear as the second graph was wrong placement. It should be lower in the body.  By placing this so high up, he comes off defensive.)

When we think about commercials that offend us, we think of those that glorify antisocial behavior – like the scores of Super Bowl ads that are built around the crass objectification of women. Unlike those ads, no one walks away from our commercials taking the causes we highlighted less seriously. Not a single person watched our ad and concluded that it’s cool to kill whales. In fact – and this is part of the reason we ran them – they have the opposite effect. (This is the biggest error in the statement. The finger needs to pointed at Groupon not others. You’re guilty, own up to it. I’d delete the entire thing.)

The firm that conceived the ad, Crispin Porter & Bogusky, strives to draw attention to the cultural tensions created by brands. When they created this Hulu ad, they highlighted the idea that TV rots your brain, making fun of Hulu. Our ads highlight the often trivial nature of stuff on Groupon when juxtaposed against bigger world issues, making fun of Groupon. Why make fun of ourselves? Because it’s different – ads are traditionally about shameless self promotion, and we’ve always strived to have a more honest and respectful conversation with our customers. We would never have run these ads if we thought they trivialized the causes – even if we didn’t take them as seriously as we do, what type of company would go out of their way to be so antagonistic? (Again, no reason to hang the firm out to dry. Groupon approved the concept and the ad. Groupon is the guilty party. I say loose this paragraph entirely. Take the high road Andrew! Also, all this name dropping isn’t a good business practice. No need to bring Hulu into this situation. Also if I was the firm I wouldn’t have allowed by name to be used in this way. I think that firm needs to put out their own statement saying that they followed their client’s wishes.)

We took this approach knowing that, if anything, they would bring more funding and support to the highlighted causes. That’s why organizations like Greenpeace, buildOn, The Tibet Fund, and the Rainforest Action Network all decided to throw their support behind the campaign (read Greenpeace’s blog post here). In fact, the feedback led us to make changes to the end of our ads that further encourage our fundraising. To that point, if the ads affected you, we hope you’ll head over to SaveTheMoney.org and make a donation (which we’ll match) – we’re hoping to raise a lot of money. (Good points, however, poorly executed. Andrew is still defending his campaign. He needs to let it go and just apologize.)

The last thing we wanted was to offend our customers – it’s bad business and it’s not where our hearts are. (Best line of the statement. Should be at the start.)

RONZONI’S RE-WRITE

Here’s what I would have recommended as a statement. Less is always best.