Critics across the board pan Go Daddy’s risqué Super
Bowl ads, but don’t look for the Web hosting company to change its
tactics anytime soon – especially after this year’s record sales
success. Go Daddy’s 2009 Super Bowl ad results shattered prior records
for both new customer sign-ups and total orders.
Visitors who logged on to GoDaddy.com to see both the broadcast and
online versions of the Super Bowl ads were surveyed about the
commercials. Those surveys showed two out of three women “loved” seeing
Danica Patrick “Shower.” This compares to seven out of ten men.
Go Daddy CEO and Founder Bob Parsons has always believed GoDaddy-esque
commercials worked well, but this year’s sales statistics speak loud and
clear, especially in light of the current economic climate. “This
Super Bowl ad campaign turned out to be right on the money for us; in
fact, I’d say it’s our best work,” Parsons said immediately after
the game. “Not only did customers say they liked the ads, more
importantly, many voted with their wallets when they signed up as new
customers or placed new orders.”
The ads are vintage Go Daddy. Both feature Go Daddy Girl and IndyCar
star Danica Patrick. “Shower” features Danica in a shower with a gal
pal, as college boys fantasize about manipulating the women with their
Web site. “Baseball” spoofs the steroids scandal with well-endowed women
showing off their enhancements.
Go Daddy purchased the final NBC commercial at the eleventh hour,
late Friday. It was positioned in a very risky slot, as the last
commercial to air after the final two-minute warning. Had it not been a
close contest, fewer viewers would have been watching, but when Arizona
took the lead just before that two-minute mark, all eyes were on the
game. Go Daddy’s last-minute ad gamble proved to yield one of the
game’s best positions.
“Fortune smiled on us this evening,” Parsons said.
Tonight Go Daddy generated its highest number of new customers on a
Super Bowl Sunday, or any Sunday for that matter. Total orders to Go
Daddy were up over last year’s Super Bowl record, as well, coming in at
110 percent of the 2008 results.
“We’ve had consistent market share growth with our Super Bowl ads over
the years, but what’s different this time is how quickly we converted
the new customers,” Parsons pointed out. “Before the game ended we began
seeing sales surge.”
Many people remember the Web hosting company’s first trip to the Super
Bowl five years ago. Fox yanked Go Daddy’s spoof on the infamous
“wardrobe malfunction” before it could air a second time, deeming it
inappropriate and subsequently triggering a censorship controversy.
The media quickly coined the term GoDaddy-esque, meaning the ads
are fun, edgy and slightly inappropriate.
“As it turned out, having our ad censored in 2005 was great luck for
us,” Parsons smiled. “But the fact is, our business is thriving because
of what we offer our customers in terms of products and services. Our
ads may be fun, but when it comes to helping customers, we’re dead
serious!”
Go Daddy sells low-priced Web
hosting products and backs them up with unrivaled customer service,
which most people don’t expect when they get bargain-based prices.
Meantime, with each Super Bowl campaign, Go Daddy grows its market share
of new domain
names. Before its first Super Bowl ad, Go Daddy had a mere 16
percent market share; right after the ad, it shot to 25 percent. The
next year’s ad pushed it to 32 percent and last year it hit 45 percent
and held. Right now, in a field of more than one-thousand registrars, Go
Daddy is more than four times the size of its closest competitor.
Parsons proclaimed, “My dad always said, ‘the proof of the pudding is in
the eating.’”
To see all of Go Daddy’s Super Bowl commercials, or the Internet-Only
extended versions, visit Videos.GoDaddy.com.
To learn more about how to get online quickly, without spending a lot of
money, visit www.GoDaddy.com.
About The Go Daddy Group, Inc.
Go
Daddy is a leading provider of services that enable individuals and
businesses to establish, maintain and evolve an online presence. Go
Daddy provides a variety of domain
name registration plans and Web
site design and hosting
packages, as well as a broad array of on-demand services. These
include products such as SSL
Certificates, Domains by Proxy private
registration, ecommerce
Web site hosting, blog
templates and blog
software, podcast
packages and online
photo hosting. The Go Daddy Group, Inc. has more than 33 million
domain names under management. Go Daddy registers, renews or transfers a
domain name every second. GoDaddy.com is the world's No. 1 domain name
registrar according to Name Intelligence, Inc. GoDaddy.com is also rated
the world’s largest hostname provider according to Netcraft Ltd. During
2008, The Go Daddy Group registered more than one-third of all new
domain names created in the top six generic top-level domains, or gTLDs,
including .com, .net, .org, .info, .biz and .mobi.
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