Last year GoDaddy ran a “risque” advert during the Super Bowl. I put risque in inverted commas, as by European standards it would hardly have qualified as such. It may be mildly sexist, but it would hardly upset a European audience.
However, the US television bosses seem to view such things with a much more conservative mindset.
This year Bob Parsons, GoDaddy’s CEO, has booked a spot, but writes that:
We do not, as of yet, have an approved commercial. All of the commercials weve thus far submitted have been rejected. So what are we going to do? We are going back to the drawing board and are reshooting several more scenarios, with the hope that one or more of them will be acceptable to ABC.
Bit crazy really, when you consider how much the ad spot is costing (excluding production):
The starting price for a 30-second spot during this years Super Bowl increased two hundred thousand bucks — to a record $2.6 million dollars. To this, add the production cost of the commercial.
So what is all the controversy about?
Well, GoDaddy have chosen a rather attractive young lady as their “mascot”, Candice Michelle and feature her in all their TV advertising.
And they aren’t going to produce a boring advert:
Any ad we show will be “GoDaddy-esque.”
Heres what I can tell you about the commercial we hope to show:
1. It will star Candice Michelle, our Go Daddy Girl.
2. It will be “GoDaddy-esque.” In order to be “GoDaddy-esque”, a commercial must be edgy, hot, slightly tasteless and just a touch inappropriate.
No matter how things pan out with ABC and the Super Bowl Parsons will have gained quite a bit of publicity without even showing the advert.
Zoodoodle Keeper says
We just put two links on our HomePage at http://zoodoodle.com to GoDaddy’s TV Ads page.
If all websites that do business with GoDaddy would do the same we would see alot of return to GoDaddy and Bob for all he has done for the Web with his “Out-Front Style of Hard Charging Promotion and approach to Business and the internet.
Put the links up and lets see what happens!
http://JoeBikini.Com
blacknight says
Zoodoodle – We don’t do business with them. I was more interested in the prudery of American TV
Lana says
We are not in Europe. We are in the US. They are 100% sexist and I am embarrassed for them that they cant think of something origonal. Hmm, lets see…sex sells, lets use sexy women and degrade them by emphasizing their bodies in degrading ways?? wow, very very intuitive. They are a bunch of morons and they are offensive. You would think the company was run by a group of adolescent boys that can’t get girlfriends and wack off to porn all day. Your typical losers…the day they think of something intelligent, someone alert the press.