Super Bowl Ads: GoDaddy’s Miscue

The 2005 Super Bowl showed GoDaddy to be a skillful marketer. A combination of well-publicized ad rejections, a sexy, funny ad that aired only once, and Internet-only versions of their ads combined to create a cost-effective win. For the cost of one Super Bowl ad (their second slot was taken away by network censors), GoDaddy created a mountain of publicity and website traffic. That’s great marketing - don’t just show your ad once in the costly game time slot, but instead leverage the exposure with pre-game and post-game publicity and web traffic. The 2006 Super Bowl ad from GoDaddy wasn’t as strong, in my opinion, but drove plenty of web traffic to GoDaddy’s web site (a bigger traffic leap than any other Super Bowl advertiser). It even confounded brain-scanning neuromarketers: Super Bowl Ads: GoDaddy Girl 1, Neuroscientists 0.

Unfortunately, 2007 wasn’t nearly as good for GoDaddy. See what you think:

They aired this ad twice, perhaps because GoDaddy CEO Bob Parsons thought “the approved commercial will go down as being one of the best we’ve ever done.” To me, it’s messy and disjointed, with no coherent message. More importantly, it’s not all that entertaining (although I’ll grant that the punch line about everyone wanting to work in marketing was amusing - the first time). For male domain buyers who flocked to view the sexy GoDaddy girl, it’s not even particularly salacious. To compound the problem, GoDaddy chose to air the same ad twice. If they were hoping that CBS would yank the second showing, it didn’t work. Contrast the 2007 ad with 2006’s “hearing” ad, and you’ll conclude that in 2007 GoDaddy spent twice the money for significantly less impact. USAToday ranked the ad as among the least liked in the 2007 Super Bowl.

For Super Bowl 2008, my recommendations to GoDaddy are:

1. ** If you are going to use Candice Michelle (the GoDaddy Girl), keep her on-screen and involved (vs. serving as passive eye candy in “Marketing Department”), and tie what she’s doing, however loosely, to GoDaddy’s services. The “hearing” commercial did that; “Marketing Department” didn’t.
2. ** Try airing a commercial with the other GoDaddy spokes-celebrity, Danica Patrick. She’s sexy enough to attract male viewers, but will have significant crossover appeal.
3. ** Run two ads if you reserve two spots. They could be variations on the same theme, or even quite different ads. If nothing else, shooting two arrows doubles the probability of a bullseye.

We really hope that the 2008 Super Bowl sees the triumphant return of GoDaddy as a master of cross-medium marketing.

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