When the word Superbowl comes to mind football, parties, and commercials come to mind. Companies pay millions of dollars to receive just one slot in the commercial line up. A company that has been trying to build their name and used humor appeal to gain attention was Groupon. The commercial that drove a lot of controversy is the one about Tibet and they were trying to create humor and raise awareness issues. But, this did not go over well for many people and they expressed their feelings in many ways such as blogs and twitter.
The CEO of Groupon, Andrew Mason, obviously had to take a lot of heat for this uproar. Therefore, Mason gave sent out an apology to those he had offended. But, this didn’t seem to satisfy people because they did not feel it was a sincere apology. From a marketers point of view the bad publicity that was caused met the goal of increasing brand awareness but in a negative way. But from a leadership point of view, especially a CEO, it is your responsibility to lead toward a positive change. The fact that Mason was trying to point fingers at other people in his apology did not help his case. According to the trait approach, there are five distinct traits that help describe a leader. I think that Mason lost some of his integrity through the commercial choice and the “non-apology” letter. Because of these commercials and the response that they got employees might start having a hard time trusting their CEO. This can be a dangerous place to be as a leader because as I have learned if you do not trust the person running the company, how can you trust that you are working for a reputable company. Not only are employees going to question their place in the company but potential consumers are going to have a hard time trusting the company and wanting to be a part of it. I think that Groupon could have raised awareness with humor in a different way then they portrayed.
This also makes me think that why didn’t anyone in the company think about how offensive the commercials might be. Is Mason leading in a way that does not give a chance to other people to express their ideas and thoughts? The employees were able to make the commercial, but were they willing? This leads into the Situational Approach as to what kind of leading is he doing inside the company. Because Mason would have wanted his employees to be both able and willing, he must have been leading in a directing style. If they were not willing, this possibly could have allowed other people to speak up and give other ideas for the commercial. This would have allowed more feedback to be given and possibly a different result would have came from the company.
The question that I raise to you is do you think that Mason could have earned some integrity back by taking the blame instead of defending himself and what type of development level do you think Mason was leading his team?
Video Commercial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVkFT2yjk0A
--Posted by: Devan Pritchett
Dr. Sheep's feedback for your team:
ReplyDeleteIn general, you are off to a good start in your blog. Although you have found some interesting articles on this topic, your blog could improve by rising more clearly to the level of insightful analysis, as we discussed in class. For example, one of your posts states: “This leads into the Situational Approach as to what kind of leading is he doing inside the company. Because Mason would have wanted his employees to be both able and willing, he must have been leading in a directing style. If they were not willing, this possibly could have allowed other people to speak up and give other ideas for the commercial.” This does not map very clearly or accurately onto the situational theory model, as far as I can interpret it. In another post, Katz’s model is briefly mentioned, but I am still curious why this model is being used when I clearly recommended in class that you would use Mumford’s model instead.
While your posts all attempt in one way or another to apply leadership concepts or approaches, they do so in a somewhat non-specific way (some more than others). Thus, defining your terms more clearly in how they apply to specifics of your article will improve the credibility of your conclusions in your post. It may also help to keep in mind what I have tried to emphasize several times in class—that simply mentioning a word that comes from somewhere in the textbook is not the same as applying that concept (in the context of its theory). It should be applied in an accurately-defined way to explain the insights it provides in understanding leadership issues that may be raised by the article. Otherwise, you have begun your blog reasonably well, and you have posted some interesting material.