Okay, this is only loosely germane to this blog, but I encountered this controversy on Climate Progress, Joe Romm's prolific climate/energy blog, so I say it's fair game.
There've been lots of complaints about the Groupon Super Bowl ads over the past few days. If you're not familiar, check out the following ad:
You can see why this might be considered controversial. Deforestation, which is a leading cause of global climate change and plenty of other environmental problems, is a serious problem that should be taken seriously. I wandered across Joe Romm's complaints about this ad on his blog, Climate Progress, and found his (and many of his commenters') criticisms to be only slightly misguided. The criticisms basically accused Groupon of trivializing global problems like deforestation and that any intended satire was a misfire. I left the following comment on the post:
It remains hard for me to believe that Romm (and many commenters) can't recognize satire. "30 seconds is simply not enough time to do a satirical ad"? Really? I got it. So did lots of people:
http://www.thesmokingjacket.com/lifestyle/groupon-super-bowl-controversy
The criticism leveled against Groupon following their admittedly controversial ads seems to accuse them of not doing more to bring attention to the problems of deforestation, commercial whaling and Tibetan social/political disputes. These critiques hold Groupon to a different standard than, say, Frito Lay, whose numerous Doritos/Pepsi ads have not been accused of ignoring/trivializing global problems, even though they do less to foster debate and awareness than Groupon.
Please, allow me to indicate the ridiculousness I personally perceive in these arguments:
@All : do you own more than one pair of shoes? How dare you not spend that money on slowing deforestation?
This absurd question is the exact same mistake that I believe you all are making, albeit with a lower profile. Groupon is targeting its ads at consumers it knows will spend disposable income on luxury goods (i.e., almost everything) instead of altruistic motivations. Within the confines of the capitalist system that Groupon necessarily operates in, Groupon is doing exactly what we all do.
I agree with @Mike (comment #13). At the end of the day, Groupon is a business marketing itself. If you don't like that, then complain about consumerism at large, but don't single out Groupon. At least Groupon is willing to make interesting advertisements that just might raise awareness about these terrible problems, AND give people consumer discounts for donating to the causes. If only we could get more attractive celebrities to say the word "deforestation" on TV without it seeming patronizing or obsolete.
We'll see if that comment survives moderation. For the record, @Mike said the following:
It is OK to laugh a little. I only watched the Hurley one. Look, she got thousands [sic] of beer drinking guys to think about rain forest destruction for 15 seconds. Maybe we can get her to do a climate change ad. “Extreme weather is not good on your hair! …” Joe, you have a certain audience in mind. That’s fine. But her audience will have to be reached using different methods. Let’s be open minded and creative. The Party that can’t laugh at itself [sic] loses.
Amen to that. Problems like deforestation (which is basically a proxy for climate change) are both complex and immediately irrelevant to Groupon's bottom line. We shouldn't admonish for-profit companies that dare to mention controversial issues in tones that we aren't used to, especially when they're raising money to help combat these global problems.
[UPDATE: In the approximately 72 hours since I submitted my dissenting, non-inflammatory post on Climate Progress, the comment moderators over there appear to have censored my opinion. Cool.]
[UPDATE: Roughly one week after I originally submitted my comment, new comments on the post have now been disabled. I'll have to keep my eye on Climate Progress from now on, to see if my experience is an outlier or part of their MO.]
No comments:
Post a Comment