As the holiday season approaches, anticipation for the Superbowl increases as well. Part of the draw for millions of viewers is the commercials that, for once, people actually won’t skip past on their DVRs. Some of the raunchier or more controversial advertisements debut during the game and then are never seen again, or in the case of Go Daddy, are never approved by censors in the first place. This year however, censors at NBC’s Standards and Practices division have actually approved two half minute commercials for Go Daddy that promote the .CO, which is rising in popularity. The ads will air during the 2012 Superbowl for the eighth year in a row.
Go Daddy is a company whose mission is to help businesses and individuals maintain and develop their presence on the internet by creating plans for registration, designing websites, and offering hosting packages. These services can help businesses or budding entrepreneurs with blogging, online marketing and storage, security, and sales. Go Daddy is one of the world’s top registrars for domain names and providers of business web hosting.
Representatives for Go Daddy spoke recently about the edginess of their commercials, which still manage to (eventually) pass censorial inspection yet remain controversial. These commercials, reps said, are not designed to be rejected out of hand, though critics have suggested as much. Instead, they are reportedly intended to offer a sense of fun and slight inappropriateness, which is what viewers expect, sources say.
A 2005 spot parodying the Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson “wardrobe malfunction” at the 2004 Superbowl aired once and was then yanked by Fox after they decided it was not appropriate for the event. Since then, the company has been inspired to air a “Go Daddy only” version of their Superbowl commercials that is exclusively viewable online, a gambit designed to bring a host of curious viewers to their website at GoDaddy.com. The ploy seems to work, as the critically derided commercials continue to drive up website hits in their uncensored versions.
At the 2011 Superbowl, after presenting two ads – one mocking its own edgy style and the other featuring celebrity Joan Rivers as the new spokeswoman – Go Daddy saw its website hits spike to record levels within minutes after airing.
This year, Danica Patrick and Jillian Michaels will be the Go Daddy Girls featured in commercials. Patrick, who is working for the sixth consecutive year for the company, is expected to drive for Go Daddy with NASCAR in 2012. She recently expressed her enthusiasm about working for Go Daddy, praising their fun marketing strategies and the innovative tactics the company has employed to drive up their website hits. She also enjoys the subversive edge to their commercials that push censors to their limits.
This year, however, both thirty second spots have been approved, which may work against Go Daddy since they have relied so much on the controversy created by the immediate rejection of their commercials in the past.
Both spots are being produced at the beginning of December in Arizona and Los Angeles.
