No, this isn’t an article about how bad the GoDaddy ad was … because I saw nothing wrong with it or the one Fox and the NFL pulled.
What’s interesting is the viral news / blog explosion caused by not running the ad a second time.
CEO of GoDaddy, Bob Parsons seems to take the situation very seriously, “As you may have noticed our Super Bowl ad only appeared during the scheduled first quarter spot. It was scheduled to run also in the second ad position during the final two minute warning. Our ad never ran a second time. Instead, in its place, we saw an advertisement promoting, of all things, “The Simpsons.”
We immediately contacted Fox to find out what happened. Here’s what we were told: After our first ad was aired, the NFL became upset and they, together with Fox, decided to pull the ad from running a second time. Because we purchased two spots, we were also entitled to a “Brought to you by GoDaddy.com” 5 second marquis spot. They also chose to pull the marquis spot.
I’m sure you’ll be hearing more about this over the next few days. I believe that it’s the first time ever a decision was made to pull an ad after it had already been run once during the same broadcast.”
Some see this controversy as a win for GoDaddy …
FutureWire: “Among the commercials archived is the spot for Internet domain registrar GoDaddy.com, undobtedly the most controversial, most talked-about — and possibly most effective — of all the Super Bowl ads. Aside from the risque nature of the spot itself (in which a well-endowed young lady nearly loses her top during a Congressional hearing),
GoDaddy is capitalizing on speculation that the NFL pressured Fox to pull the second installment of the ad. As a result, this heretofore little-known company is enjoying an enormous increase in interest. The Red Couch blog is tracking how GoDaddy is rising in search rankings as the result of its publicity. Once again, bloggers and discussion forums are weighing in, creating the kind of buzz that only the Internet can deliver.
Wardrobe malfunctions 1, NFL 0!”
Adrants says that their story on the GoDaddy ad that was linked to in Google crashed their servers …
“GoDaddy’s oversized, unrestrained breasts unleashed upon Adrants a torrent of visitors and crushed our servers this morning as the entire world just had to see what all the fuss was about. Being listed the second result for search term “GoDaddy” on Google Search and Google News for the headline, “See the Banned GoDaddy Super Bowl Commercial,” pummeled our operation and we’ve had to move to a more industrial strength server. We can’t imaging a worse moment for an advertising site to be down. Oh well. The price of popularity. Or maybe it was just a well written headline.”
Microsoft blogger Robert Scoble also believes that this controversy is a win for GoDaddy:
“GoDaddy wins two ways: one, they’ll probably get their money back for the second ad that didn’t run. Two, they get their message out anyway and now will get a ton of PR in the morning (not to mention lots of blog mentions which will bring precious Google Juice).”
The Big Media Daddy, The New York Times, also had a piece this morning on the GoDaddy controversy:
“The GoDaddy.com spot was meant to be provocative enough to attract attention but not so tasteless that it would be rejected outright. Somehow, it wound up in a muddle in the middle.
“We honestly weren’t trying to make a commercial that would get rejected,” said Paul Cappelli, the chief executive of the Ad Store, “but we were making a commercial that we hoped would get noticed.”
“We worked hard to make sure we didn’t cross the line,” he added, “but we poked fun at censorship and guess what? We were censored. It’s kind of scary.””
The Times article also makes it clear that the GoDaddy ad was approved after changes well before the Super Bowl.
Isn’t it ironic that an ad that mocks the garment issue from last years game and in effect mocks censorship gets censored itself? This is an ad that didn’t even show anything.
Does this set a precident that FCC controlled TV now should censor content that even suggest potential nudity?
This is absurd.
View the GoDaddy commercial that ran once and the one that was previously rejected here.
murdok is the CEO of murdok which publishes over 200 websites and email newsletters.
Rich also publishes his blog WebProBlog which focuses on internet business and marketing trends.
