No more GoDaddy Girls. No more uncomfortable TV censors. No more outraged parents asking themselves: What on earth is this stuff doing on the Super Bowl? And while Danica Patrick is returning to GoDaddy's Super Bowl advertising for the ga-zillionth time, no more racy role for her, either.
Sorry Miley Cyrus, but GoDaddy, the company that almost single-handedly turned Super Bowl advertising into soft porn, has finally come to the corporate realization that at some point, sex actually doesn't sell. Particularly when it's predictable, gratuitous and, well, boring.
GODADDY: Not bringing sexy back
Over the years, GoDaddy and its racy Super Bowl spots have devolved into little more than a sophomoric wink, wink. It's one thing to wink at a pickup bar. It's another thing to wink in front of the nation's biggest annual TV audience exceeding 100 million viewers.
Any time you're a company known for its babes with big bumps — and you're not Playboy, Penthouse or Hooters — you've got a problem. Oh sure, the GoDaddy girls put a virtually unknown GoDaddy on the map a decade ago and gave it instant name recognition, but at what price? Super Bowl after Super Bowl, GoDaddy dug itself deeper into the muck, concocting sometimes absurd ways to tease Super Bowl viewers into not only watching its ads, but then, jumping onto its website to click away and be teased some more.
At the beginning, it was nothing more than a shrewd branding gamble. And it worked — for a while. Just get enough people to notice you, and maybe remember your name, at all costs: even if one of those costs is your very reputation. Heck, you can worry about all the baggage that comes with it later on.
Well, the baggage piled up. It piled GoDaddy right into a creative corner. And now, after 10 Super Bowls of pushing sex, sex and more sex, Go Daddy wants to wiggle its way out.
It won't be easy. But it had to happen.
Of course, G! oDaddy can't be blamed for all of the Super Bowl's tasteless commercials. Tacky Super Bowl advertising has been around for years . But GoDaddy quickly, and easily, stole the spotlight.
Never mind that two years ago — at one of its Super Bowl ad shoots at its headquarters in Phoenix — GoDaddy founder Bob Parsons told USA TODAY, with a straight face, "Any sex in the ads is manufactured in the minds of the viewer."
Right. (Wink, wink.)
Year after year, GoDaddy's ads ranked near — if not, at — the very bottom of USA TODAY'S Super Bowl Ad Meter consumer poll. Parson's loved it. He couldn't care less about the polls, he said. What he most cared about was driving people to his company's website.
But the one-trick pony has lost its step. The GoDaddy girls have become yesterday's news. So, GoDaddy must venture out into the real world of corporate branding this Super Bowl and find something else to stand for besides babes in tight T-shirts.
Imagine that. Ten Super Bowls and tens of millions of dollars after its first big splash, GoDaddy must move beyond the sizzle and finally pull together something for Super Bowl Sunday that every other serious player has before it: a game plan ... that's more than skin deep.
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