Groupon Inc. is ready to launch its first TV advertising campaign since one if its 2011 Super Bowl ads was widely criticized.
The commercial, whose tagline is “Check Groupon first,” focuses on the company’s growth from a daily-deals provider to an e-commerce site.
We’re a very different company than we were in 2011, and this is a great way for us to deliver the message that Groupon has evolved from a daily deal website into a searchable e-commerce marketplace with more than 140,000 deals accessible online and via mobile devices, Nicholas Halliwell, a Groupon spokesperson, told Mashable in a statement.
The ads will begin airing April 7 over seven weeks in Atlanta, Buffalo, Detroit, Minneapolis, Nashville and San Francisco, chicagobusiness.com reported.
Have you seen our new #CheckGrouponFirst commercial? http://t.co/MhSWbtpqLI
— Groupon (@Groupon) April 3, 2014
Groupon was known early on for its edgy emails and tweets but an attempt to extend that brand of humor to a Super Bowl ad titled “Tibet” fell flat with many viewers.
Groupon ran three ads in and around the 2011 Super Bowl, but “Tibet,” the 30-second in-game commercial starring actor Timothy Hutton, generated the most negative reaction of any ad in the entire Super Bowl of Advertising.
In a blog post at the time, Groupon founder Andrew Mason said the advertising was intended as “a parody of a celebrity-narrated, PSA-style commercial.” But in the case of “Tibet,” all viewers apparently saw was a badly botched spot that made light of serious human suffering.
