media, culture, Groupon

[miss_chance]

Groupon has four television commercial out right now that are the focus of a lot of discussion and controversy. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, you can watch them on Groupon's site, but before you do it's worth noting that these commercials aired *without* the key piece of information you get when you watch them there. Notably, while

Comments

[imvfd]

No, I had not heard about this until just now, any of it.

Having just watched the commercials on their website, I'm going with "they are being part of the problem, not part of the solution." Unfortunately, even if they manage to up "awareness" and raise some money, the campaign still manages to create a link in people's brains between serious issue and "eh, it's not that important/serious." The link won't be particularly strong in people who find the issues to be important to them but it will be there nonetheless. And for people who don't really care much... I suspect that for many of them, this will just slide them further into not caring, perhaps more generally. Especially once the outrage hits. Because the reaction is likely to be along the lines of "Oh get over yourselves, it's just a silly commercial." Thus another link forms, a negative, personal, emotional connection to the cause being promoted. I can't see how any of this is going to help in the long run. Perhaps I'm overly pessimistic. Certainly hope so.

[miss_chance]

"Part of the problem" was my first impression, too, but now I'm not so sure. I feel like for me, I find the apparent intractability of the situation in Tibet so overwhelming and daunting, that more often than not I shut it out. I feel like I can't do anything to help and I can't sort through all the claims of where I could give money, so then I go back to focusing on my own person life, trying to make good decisions about personal spending. For me I think the ads ---with my newfound knowledge of the fund-raising campaigns---make little chinks in the wall I put up between the part of me that wants to solve problems and the part of me that wants to try to ignore them and focus on myself

[imvfd]

Hm, yes, I could see a positive outcome to this if there are enough people for whom this campaign is a trigger of some sort to get out of complacency. Perhaps by making the issue small enough to handle. Or perhaps having people who were "done" with the issue get re-energized by the idea that the issue is being mocked, basically, "Fuck this shit! I'm not going to [let some corporation hijack the issue to make a few bucks/have the issue be made fun of]! I'm going to go out there and make a difference!"

Also, I guess one might argue that the other methods of getting people involved haven't worked as well as one might hope. So might as well try something new. Perhaps things have gotten bad enough that this *is* in fact the best way to get people involved.

[miss_chance]

There was a time when Sally Struthers sitting with starving African children shook millions of people into action. I don't think we're necessarily worse or different than we were then, but I think we've seen that now, we know of it, we've seen the photos and thousands more horrifying and children are still starving. We're less innocent and the problems still exist. How *do* we relate? I don't know and I'm fascinated. And I care a lot. I generally find the Superbowl commercials to be an interesting/intriguing annual reflection of American culture, but the inclusion of actual important topics in Superbowl ads... it seems like a possibly good sign about culture, even if it's bad. ... maybe?

[veek]

I did know about the ads, but not about the campaign. I wasn't horrified by them, but did think they were in extremely bad taste. Now that I know about the matching funds campaign, I think they're in bad taste AND anti-effective. The ads need to MENTION the campaign, for goodness' sake, or they turn people (who might otherwise have participated) off of Groupon and any charity they're doing.

[miss_chance]

I'm not sure that it wasn't their intention to first get a lot of people pissed off so they talk about the ads, and then have people discover the campaign. If there was a footnote in the original ad about the donations, I wonder if they wouldn't have been talked about so much. Like billboards that put up a teaser message for a week, then reveal the punch-line and the sponsor later, only using the speed of news as the delay tactic.

[veek]

Certainly plausible, but IMO too risky with regard to... well, people who don't think too much, frankly.

[miss_chance]

I'm not sure that "people who don't think too much" are likely to be swayed to help the situation in Tibet by any TV commercial. I wonder if liberals with "Save Tibet" stickers on their Saabs (or mini-vans) are the target audience here, and the ones with the discretionary income to spend?

[hammercock]

I didn't think they were mocking the issues, but the style of commercials that usually draw attention to them. That said, my first reaction was, "Really? Really?" and my second reaction was, "Er, fish curry is not Tibetan."

reposted to fix formatting b/c my account is not paid up ATM

[fraterrisus]

If somebody staged a play using blackface actors and donated half the proceeds to the NAACP, I'd have been just as outraged.

This campaign, if it ran with the motivations you're guessing, is "too clever by half". Note that I was so turned off by the ad we watched last night that I couldn't be bothered to dig into it and find out what you've discovered here, so I had no idea about the charitable donation aspect.

And frankly, "let's piss off people so they go to our website and discover that we're not so bad as they thought" is a little too postmodern for an advertising campaign, IMHO.

[miss_chance]

I'm not sure how I'd be on the first one. I guess it would depend on the play, how it was done, who was involved, etc. The "donate half the proceeds" implies they automatically profit, though, so a more accurate metaphor might be if they were to do a free performance of said play and collect donations for NAACP, and then match those donations one-for-one out of the profits from other plays they produce, without obligations that people give them any money directly. But, still, it would depend on the play etc. for me

[dbang]

Call me shallow. I think they're funny. The fish curry from landlocked Tibet was a little startling and disrespectful...they should have taken the effort to at least pick a traditional Tibetan dish. But other than that? *shrug*

The blackface analogy doesn't hold. There was nothing in the "real issue" portion of the three ads I saw that was offensive to whales, Tibet or the rainforest.