In my 53 years on earth, I have never witnessed a more tasteless, vulgar and morally repulsive example of exploitative marketing than this Groupon ad that ran on the Super Bowl tonight. Can you imagine using the suffering of a repressed and brutalized nation to market online coupons? It’s mind-boggling. What’s next, Groupon? Perhaps an ad for discounted cigars made by the survivors of the Haitian earthquake?

Groupon should buy network TV time to apologize for this obscenity. How on earth did the management at the company allow this to happen? If you are as offended by this ad as I am, I encourage you to tweet your opinion to Andrew Mason, founder and CEO of Groupon.

Update: David Kaplan covers the outrage on Twitter in a good post on PaidContent.org. The ad “was in such poor taste, it makes the outrage directed toward Cole’s insensitive, tone-deaf tweet equating sales and the Cairo uprising against Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak seem mild,” he writes.

Update: In a posting on the Groupon blog, founder Andrew Mason explains that the ad is partly satirical. “What if we did a parody of a celebrity-narrated, PSA-style commercial that you think is about some noble cause (such as ‘Save the Whales’), but then it’s revealed to actually be a passionate call to action to help yourself (as in ‘Save the Money’)?”

Actually, we think it’s a terrible idea. If the ad is intended to raise money for Tibet, it would have been nice to offer diners the option of sending their savings directly to Tibetan relief. But the ad neglects that detail.

Groupon is saving face by matching donations up to $100,000 to The Tibet Fund. Take them up on that.