Home » Business » InfoUSA Pulls Salesgenie Ad

InfoUSA Pulls Salesgenie Ad

By LIFS March 12, 2008 at 1:20 AM
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InfoUSA has pulled a Super Bowl ad criticized as being racist.

In the ad, animated Panda bears with Chinese accents save their business, Ling Ling's Bamboo Furniture, with sales leads from an InfoUSA product called Salesgenie.

 
The ad was reportedly written by the company's chief executive Vin Gupta, said none of his Asian friends took offence to the commercial, only whites. "The pandas are Chinese," he said. "They don't speak German."

Gupta told the New York Times that he wasn't dropping another Salesgenie commercial, featuring an animated salesman named Ramesh who speaks with an Indian accent.

"People have been making fun of my accent for years. And I love it."

The Supergenie ads rated among the poorest of all 54 ads aired in the superbowl in several independent surveys. However, traffic to the salesgenie website surged 333 percent following the ad. 

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Business | Magazine | March 2008

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