The Super Bowl has come and gone again this year, proving that every now and then, there can be something more entertaining than TV spots. Good for football…bad for advertisers. This year’s crop of Super Bowl ads were ran the gamut from not bad to Gawd-awful, with a few stops in-between. One of the notable losers this year was GoDaddy, who, once again, trotted out “controversial” as their ad strategy.

Sex sells, they figure, and being controversial gets you noticed, so why not put together an ad campaign that gets free publicity from the controversy (like creating ads the network won’t run, then trumpeting the fact all over the news). Besides, football is a guy thing (primarily) and guys love locker-room humor (everywhere), large breasts (on women), innuendo (and double-entendre…even if they don’t know what they mean), and…sex. After all, the strategy worked last year…and the year before…and the year before that…

Problem is, as Howard Stern, Madonna, Marilyn Manson, and other freak shows can tell you, it’s easy to get noticed for being outrageous, but it’s a LOT harder to get noticed over and over again for pushing that envelope. Stern was a “hero” to the arrested development crowd when he drug his show through the AM/FM gutter. Today, he’s an over-paid embarrassment on SatRadio. Madonna once “wrote” a book (illustrated with many pictures) called “Sex.” Not sure there are a lot of people out there that would pay for a sequel. Manson? Well, lets just say there’s not a lot of money left in that particular freak show. So what about GoDaddy?

When GoDaddy first ran ads on the Super Bowl, it was a bet-the-farm strategy, where they blew through their entire advertising budget. Gone in 60 Seconds wasn’t just a movie to them – it was the name of their advertising strategy. And it worked. Model “Candace Michelle” and her surgically-enhanced figure were the talk of the Bowl. Love it or hate it, everybody was talking about GoDaddy – no mean feat for a company that basically sells URLs and cheap web hosting. Fast-forward to today, and GoDaddy is no longer the enemy at the gates, hoping to pillage part of the Holy Network Solutions Empire. Today, they sell more than three times as many URLs as their next largest competitor, dwarfing everyone else in the market.

Note to GoDaddy CEO Bob Parsons: As a retired U.S. Marine, you might wanna look up some Sun Tzu stuff on tatics…there’s a different strategy indicated when you’re the market leader, as opposed to being the upstart outsider who’s Hell-bent on attacking the leader.

Back when they first ran the Webmaster Barbie ads, it made sense, in a way…get noticed by the young propellerheads watching the game, and the rest will surely follow. As the reigning market leaders, that strategy makes virtually no sense, whatsoever.

Don’t get me wrong…I’m not suggesting that GoDaddy lose it’s sense of humor (no matter how juvenile it may be), nor am I suggesting that the Super Bowl is a bad fit for them. But they need a different strategy if they are going to do anything but waste money in yet again another example of corporate ego and hubris.  Here’s my idea (and, I suppose, a free spot for GoDaddy, if they are listening)…

[FADE UP on the interior of a cavernous executive office...high ceiling, lots of mahogany bookshelves, plush, velvet drapes, huge, executive desk - an office fit for a Rothschild or Rockerfeller. As the camera dollies-in, the wingback chair behind the turns and we see Bob Parsons, immaculately dressed.]

[PARSONS]

“Hi, I’m GoDaddy CEO Bob Parsons, and I’d like to thank you for making GoDaddy #1 among domain registrars. Evidently our strategy of using sex to sell, has paid off, in a big way.”

[Cut to tight shot on Parsons.]

“But when you’re number one, you owe it to your market to behave with a little more decorum – no need for outrageous behavior any more. But rest assured, that while our ads may not be as outrageous, we’re still the same great company, with the same attitudes towards serving you the best way we know how.”

[SFX: intercom buzzer]

“Yes, Ms. Patrick…what is it?”

[Cut to Dannica Patrick at a secretary's desk, dressed as a very professional - yet obviously attractive administrative assistant]

[PATRICK]

“Mr. Parsons, the cake you ordered to celebrate our dominating the market for URLs and web hosting has arrived. Shall I have it brought in?”

[Cut to Parsons behind desk]

[PARSONS]

“Yes, Ms. Patrick.”

[Cut to cake large enough to contain a woman being wheeled in by four very attractive women, dressed in slightly sexy, pinstriped business suits.]

“Thank you, ladies. That will do.”

[Cut to closeup of Parsons]

“Thanks to all of you for making GoDaddy number one. We’ll let you get back to the game now, so we can do some celebrating around here.”

[Cut to shot of Parsons in background, with cake in extreme foreground...we hear the GoDaddy music tag, as the top of the cake pops off, implying that a woman has popped out of the cake, but we can't see her...just Parson's reaction. Cut to extreme closeup of Parsons.]

“Life is good.”

[Parson's winks at the camera, music up and out, fade to black and superimpose logo.]

[-30-]

Will GoDaddy clean up their act? Doubtful. As long as they are number one, there’s really no reason or rationale for them to change strategies, from their point of view. Then again, that’s been the downfall of almost every losing general in history, when they reach the point that they confuse winning with invincibility. Which is the point just before the word “cleavage” not only describes a point of interest regarding anatomy, but what happens to a sizable portion of their market as it gets ripped from their grasp by a more agile competitor.