GoDaddy makes a habit of making Super Bowl commercials that don’t air during the Super Bowl. The spot that did air last night promised viewers more if they’d just click over to GoDaddy.com. According to Ad Age, a record two million people took the GoDaddy challenge.
“For us, because we’re an internet company and we sell domain names, there’s no way we can really explain what we do in a commercial. We had to get people to our website,” Go Daddy founder and CEO Bob Parsons said.
The edgy, though ham-fisted ad — a parody of sorts on the whole celebrity “upskirt” phenomenon — didn’t curry favor with all viewers. A GoDaddy.com survey asked 160,000 people what they thought of the commercial. Some 17.1% of males disliked the ad; 16.5% of females disliked it. This was OK with Mr. Parsons, because “they still came to the website.
I went to GoDaddy to see the ad so you don’t have to. It’s beyond bad. But that’s hardly surprising coming from a CEO who can’t make a 30-second pitch for his core service and doesn’t care if he diminishes his brand with bad jokes and unfulfilled teases.
