From what we’ve heard, the Chicago-based company doesn’t believe the commercials were misguided, but rather that it made a mistake by not directing folks to a Web site, where it was raising money for certain causes and matching up to $100,000 in donations. The site,SaveTheMoney.org, should have been mentioned in the commercials instead of expecting consumers to make the jump on their own from groupon.com to a link on the side of the page. –Groupon Backpedals, AllThingsD

Groupon has been taking a lot of heat for their Super Bowl ads… I didn’t watch the Super Bowl and have not seen the commercials in question so I really can’t comment on whether or not they come across as offensive. However, given the near unanimous negative reaction to them, yeah I would say it would be hard for Groupon to assert that these ads were anything but in poor taste and offensive to the audience they were trying to reach but there is also a “piling on” effect and I’m not going to contribute to that.

By the way, I also agree with Tricia Duryee that these ads, no matter how negatively they are reviewed, will not have an impact on Groupon. Consumers will still flock to the site and fuel their incredible growth.

What interests me is Groupon’s reaction to this, which is best summed up as the audience didn’t get our humor and our credentials in philanthropic circles are impeccable, and if a mistake was made it was not putting the website addresses for the signature organizations on the ads.

This strikes me as a pretty lame response when the entire controversy would go away with this simple statement:

“We screwed up and we’re sorry. The ads are reviewed and what we don’t pull we will edit to reflect our commitment to these issues.”

[Editor’s Note: Cross-posted at SiliconValleyWatcher. –mrh]