Well I Never...

So Groupon has decided that they can’t take the heat. Groupon CEO Andrew Mason is now blaming the agency CP&B for their new controversial ad. Mason said that they relied too much on the agency “to be edgy, informative and entertaining, and we turned off the part of our brain where we should have made our own decisions. We learned that you can't rely on anyone else to control and maintain your own brand.” Groupon has since left CP&B and is currently not seeking another agency.

So who’s to blame for all of this? Is Groupon the villain or does the buck stop with CP&B? Given what we have learned in class I believe that both parties share blame and could have taken steps to make sure that this situation didn’t blow up in their face.

First of all, Groupon should of realized what they where getting into. Groupon wanted to get their name out there and they thought that CP&B would be able to do that. But when CP&B pitched the idea of making light of international trouble, they should have realized that there would be a backlash.

But that doesn’t mean that Groupon is entirely to blame here. CP&B are just as responsible for the controversy that took place. All of this could have been avoided with just one URL for a Tibetan charity in the original airing of the commercial. By adding the URL on the commercial the agency is not only advertising for Groupon, but they are giving out charity information about the subject of the commercial.

So is it ok for Groupon to throw CP&B under the bus for this commercial? No, it isn’t. Groupon needs to pull the commercial and have a press release where they publicly apologize for the commercial by making a donation to a Tibetan charity with the money they may or may not have made from the commercial. By trying to blame the ad agency they are just making themselves look incompetent. By taking responsibility for the ad, they are presenting themselves as a serious company that is able to admit when they are wrong and are trying to make up for it.