Groupon Dumps Crispin Porter + Bogusky

Split

Last week one of CP+B’s biggest clients, Burger King, decided to leave them and now, Groupon dumps CP+B after the Super Bowl fiasco with their commercials.

It is surprising that Groupon CEO Andrew Mason decided to switch sides and having been defending the Superbowl ads that CP+B produced. He is now blaming himself and CP+B for trusting them too much “to be edgy, informative and entertaining, and [Groupon] turned off the part of [their] brain where [they] should have made [their] own decisions. [They] learned that you can’t rely on anyone else to control and maintain your own brand.”

The purpose of the ads were to take well-known causes and change the cause and the role of the celebrity spokesperson.

As described in AdAge, “the situation illustrates a classic tension in marketer-agency relationships: Clients say they want to take risks, but later realize they weren’t ready or can’t stomach the criticism associated with them. And CP&B is nothing if not a risk-taker, known for ads that reap miles of PR, even if they stir up controversy.”