Groupon CEO Offers Apology for Super Bowl Ads

By Chuck Sudo in News on Feb 11, 2011 6:20PM

Groupon CEO Andrew Mason offered an apology for the company's much-maligned Super Bowl ads, saying that the company will work to pull the commercials from circulation.

We hate that we offended people, and we’re very sorry that we did - it’s the last thing we wanted. We’ve listened to your feedback, and since we don’t see the point in continuing to anger people, we’re pulling the ads (a few may run again tomorrow - pulling ads immediately is sometimes impossible). 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.

Mason also pointed out that the ads, however questionable in taste, did raise $500,000 for their intended charities.