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.

Sex is not the first thing I’ve thought of, when it comes to fast food – particularly not in relationship to Arby’s. The roast beef vendor is to fast food what the guy is at your 20th high school reunion, who’s name you can’t remember – he didn’t letter in anything, had no real accomplishments, but somehow, seems somewhat familiar, even 20 years later. You just don’t remember why.

Arby’s has an identity problem, in marketingspeak. (You’d think that being the last franchise standing that features “roast beef sandwiches” – as opposed to burgers or fried chicken – would be enough to stand out. Apparently not.) So, of course, their answer is to take the low road and use sex to sell sandwiches.

Now I’m no prude. I think the spot is actually pretty funny. The idea of a guy who loves Arby’s so much he has his wife agree to dress up like a fast food waitress is cute. Less cute is the animation of the Arby’s bug, which will forever and always make me equate their logo with a phallic symbol. (Say Bob…what do you want for lunch? I’m thinkin’ Ar…no, on second thought, forget it. I’m really not into that homoerotic symbolism thing…) Is that a ten gallon hat, or are you just Jonesing for some roast beast? I could go on, but you get the point. No pun intended.

The problem here is that, while the spot is funny, it puts the attention on sex, instead of on Arby’s. And that’s not going to be a long-term success for a company with a serious identity crisis going on. It also makes the brand fair game for every late-night comic (not to mention some of the folks that hang out on YouTube with waaaaaay too much time on their hands.

No, I think Arby’s could do a lot better than selling beef with sex. They make a good sandwich. I just wish they could find a way to make that fact a compelling story, so nobody would be forced to ask “where’s the (roast) beef”?

It’s no big secret that sex sells. What’s surprising though, is when a well-known, established brand, with products presumably in demand, resorts to using sex alone to sell it’s products. Exhibit A: Levi’s. The latest spot from the bluejeans moguls has two twenty-something impossibly beautiful people (both in Levi’s, natch) ascending the stairs on their way to what is obviously a “hook-up” (i.e.: meaningless sex between two people that barely know each other). The young man admits “I’m not really in a band.” The girl offers “I’m not really work for a lable.” The conversation continues, with each fessing up to lies they’ve told earlier. The denouement (if you can call it that) comes when he says, “truth is, I’ve been sleeping in my car.” As she strips down to her skivvies, she airily replies, “that’s okay…this isn’t really my apartment,” as the boy switches on the lights to reveal they are indeed in someone else’s apartment.

Pause with me for a nanosecond, whilst we ponder how many ways this ad trashes just about every moral value I can think of.

Let’s start with the typical, “Levi’s is what you wear when you want to be young, hip, and desirable.” (Read: “if you wanna hook up with a hottie, you’d best be wearin’ Levi’s.”) Next, we learn that, apparently, lying to someone to get in their pants is a socially acceptable dating ritual. Then, of course, there’s the whole “what’d you say your name was?” approach to casual sex. Finally, we learn that breaking and entering is A-OK, as long as you’re gonna get lucky.

What ever happened to selling jeans based on ideas like they last, their versatile, and they go with just about anything?

Look, I like looking at attractive women every bit as much as any other guy, but I’m getting pretty fed up with the idea that it’s okay to say anything, do anything, and promote anything, just to make a buck. Why does Levi’s believe it’s okay to tacitly approve of things like cheap, virtually anonymous sex, breaking into someone’s home, and lying to get what you want? Are their products so out-of-touch, expensive, or uncompetitive that they feel they must resort to pandering to the lowest emotions in order to sell their wares?

You know, I used to wear nothing but Levi’s, six days a-week. (If they’d have made men’s suits, it would have been seven days a week.) One day, I was looking for a new pair, and ran into a problem – my size was unavailable. And my need for a new pair had reached the critical stage. I remember going to three or four stores, and having no luck (apparently, I wear a pretty popular size). I was so desperate, I had no choice but to consider another brand. I tried on a pair of Wranglers. It was a revelation – they fit better, were more comfortable, and were about ten bucks cheaper than the same style of Levi’s. That day, I became a “Wrangler Man” – and haven’t looked back since. There’s not enough advertising budget in the world to get me to switch back, unless Wrangler suddenly starts making an inferior product.

Perhaps Levi’s might try something radically simple: go back to making a better product, at a competitive price, with ads that don’t offend a sizable portion of their market. Otherwise, perhaps they’d be better off making their media buys on the Playboy Channel or maybe look towards Skinimax for some product placement ideas.