Adding an Edge | Hardly Square

Is Any Press Good Press?

As you may have seen, my last post was on the Dominos advertising campaign. We had a great discussion on this campaign’s strategy and how social media and peer-to-peer communication have altered how companies advertise. So it’s interesting to see the same agency, Crispin Porter & Bogusky, in the lime light for its latest Super Bowl advertisement with Groupon. Crispin Porter used a preemptive apology in the Dominos ad with great success, then they go and create an ad that caused Groupon to have to apologize after the fact. You’ve probably seen the Groupon ad a bunch already, but if you haven’t here it is:

Groupon has been called one of the fastest growing businesses in history. I wonder how this PR crisis will affect that? This brings me to the topic that I’d like to discuss. Is it true that “any press is good press”? You’ve heard the saying before. Does it fit in this case?

Let me start out by saying that these Groupon ads are tasteless and were poorly executed. It’s terrible that this ad lightens the seriousness of the suffering Tibet has endured for decades. We can all agree on that much.

However, can the media storm this ad created actually benefit Groupon in the long run? After this year’s Super Bowl, they are by far the most talked about company. Sure the conversation puts Groupon in a bad light, but is any press good press? Will this create additional awareness for their offering and will their new and current customer base still want to use Groupon’s service to save money?

One could argue that this stinker of an ad won’t hurt Groupon as much as it’s being hyped right now. Certainly, a large percentage of potential customers that had no idea Groupon existed, or what its offering was, are now aware of it. This could translate into additional revenue streams.

It’ll boil down to how much this ad damaged their core demographics and how their new customer base grows because of the media frenzy. Groupon’s current customer base is young, educated, single women. They are socially active and are definitely a demographic that could be affected by an insensitive advertising campaign.

It’ll be interesting to see how/if Groupon’s core demographic changes after this ad and if revenues increase or decrease in the coming fiscal quarters. One thing that I’m fairly certain of is that this blunder hurts Crispin Porter more than it hurts Groupon. Maybe they’re the ones that need to run an apology campaign. They took a company that got its start with The Point, an activist based organization that creates awareness for exceptional charities, and turned them into an insensitive monster. The same monster that projected a donation of $100,000 (pre PR crisis) to each of the causes their ad campaign poked fun at (Tibet, Saving the Whales & Protecting the Rainforest). On the Groupon website you can see that they also offer a link to donate and support these causes. It’s apparent once you dig a bit that Groupon actually does care about these causes and Crispin Porter has done a great injustice to their image.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the subject. Do you think it’s possible Groupon actually comes out of this crisis with more customers? Is any press good press?