Sales Genie Pulls Questionable Super Bowl Ad

By Chris Mottram

When I (along with the people I was watching the Super Bowl with) saw the SalesGenie.com panda bear ad, I thought, "Yeah, if I was Asian, I'd be pissed." But I'm not Asian -- I'm actually quite white -- so maybe I'm off-base.

However, enough people had a reaction similar to mine to force the company to pull the commercial. Before we get into the details, here's the commercial in question:



Vinod Gupta, who is the head of SalesGenie.com's parent company, removed the ads because people were offended, although he doesn't seem to have any idea why: "People have been making fun of my accent for years, and I love it."

Oh, well, in that case it's fine to make fun of other accents. By all mean, go right ahead.

It should also be noted that for the second year in a row, Gupta wrote the company's Super Bowl ads himself. And you know what? For the second year in a row, SalesGenie.com's ads sucked (see last year's XLI commercial).

See, Mr. Gupta, this is why you pimp out sales leads for a living and ad agencies, um, create ads. Utilize their expertise next time.

> Talking Pandas, Maybe, but Not With Chinese Accents | NY Times

This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.