Groupon’s Super Bowl ads, which linked social causes with ad pitches, drew a fast and furious online reaction, CNNMoney.com reported.

The company’s spots enlisted celebrity spokespeople for touts related to their philanthropic causes.

Actor Timothy Hutton’s message about Tibet quickly veered from charitable to consumerist. “The people of Tibet are in trouble. Their very culture is in jeopardy,” he began. “But they still whip up an amazing fish curry!”

A Cuba Gooding Jr. spot started off with a “save the whales” pitch that segued into a tout for a cut-price whale-watching cruise. And an Elizabeth Hurley segment linked Brazilian deforestation to other kinds of, um, Brazilian “deforestation.” (Think waxing, CNNMoney.com said.)

“Groupon seems to have achieved the unique feat of paying $3M to lose customers who previously loved them,” advertising blogger Rohit Bhargava, a marketing professor at Georgetown University, tweeted about the ads.

In China, the reaction was fast and furious. Just minutes after the Tibet ad aired, China’s Twitter-like Sina Weibo filled up with more than 28,000 messages about it.

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