Groupon pulls controversial ads

CHICAGO —  Groupon Inc. Chief Executive Andrew Mason said the Chicago-based daily deals provider is pulling all of the Super Bowl ads that had provoked a negative reaction online over the weekend.

“We hate that we offended people, and we’re very sorry that we did - it’s the last thing we wanted,” Mason wrote in a blog post on Thursday, adding: “We will run something less polarizing instead. We thought we were poking fun at ourselves, but clearly the execution was off and the joke didn’t come through. I personally take responsibility; although we worked with a professional ad agency, in the end, it was my decision to run the ads.”

The tone of Mason’s blog post and the decision to yank the ads marked a more contrite stance than the one he took on Monday, when he tried offering an explanation of the ads’ humor and noted that they weren’t as offensive as other Super Bowl commercials that objectify women. Mason said removing the ads was a response to consumer feedback, which indicated that viewers were still upset even after his Monday explanation.

The Super Bowl ads were intended to be spoofs of celebrity-narrated public service announcements, and featured stars such as Timothy Hutton and Elizabeth Hurley talking about serious humanitarian or environmental issues in one moment and then switching to blithe chatter about a Groupon discount. In the case of the Tibet ad, which captured the brunt of the backlash, Hutton went from bemoaning Tibetans’ human rights crisis to touting a fish curry he ate at a Chicago restaurant.

The ads were intended to draw attention to a philanthropic campaign Groupon is running with several partner charities: , the Tibet Fund, Greenpeace, the Rainforest Action Network and buildOn, which constructs schools in developing countries. But the message was lost on many viewers because the Web address for the donations site never appeared on the original ads, nor did the spots mention the organizations.

Groupon amended the ads this week to make the donations Web address clearer, and heavily promoted the giving campaign on social media and through its regular e-mails. The company is matching donations up to $100,000 for three of the organizations, and providing up to $100,000 in Groupon credit for donations to Greenpeace. The Greenpeace deal sold out on Thursday evening with 6,667 vouchers sold. Friday’s featured charity is the Rainforest Action Network.

The partner organizations have publicly stood by Groupon, saying they understood the ads were meant to be tongue-in-cheek and that they appreciate the awareness Groupon is bringing to their causes.