Go Daddy will be advertising during the upcoming Super Bowl
Shortly after Fox Sports released the initial list of advertisers (one of which was GoDaddy.com), an entry appeared by John Moore in a WeBlog managed on a website called Brand Autopsy. The headline for the entry was "No Go Daddy, No." You can see the entry at: http://brandautopsy.typepad.com/brandautopsy/2004/12/no_godaddy_no.html

The author argued that buying a Super Bowl ad was a very risky and ill-advised move for Go Daddy. He also mentioned how many dot coms way back purchased Super Bowl ads who have since vanished. As others chimed in, the consensus seemed to be that Go Daddy was definitely making a huge mistake — that the $2.4 million cost of the air time would surely break us. Others argued there were better things to do with the money. Someone even suggested that instead of purchasing the Super Bowl ad we'd be better served if we simply gave the money away.

After reading the commentary, I could no longer resist the temptation, so I jumped in and explained the reasons behind our decision to advertise on the Super Bowl. I also explained that no matter what results the ad produced, Go Daddy would be just fine. The people at Brand Autopsy were amazed that the CEO of a company would actually post a reply to criticism directed at the CEO's company. I must admit I was equally surprised by their reaction. I might be a CEO but I'm also a pretty regular guy. There's simply nothing special about me. I work in an inexpensive office and have a cafeteria table for a desk and another one for a conference table. I believed responding to their comments was the right thing to do, and no one should write and post the reply but me.

Subsequent to my post, John Moore made a new Blog entry with a headline called "CEO-EGO", where he took something I said in my reply completely out of context. That didn't bother me. It actually gave me a smile.

It's pretty much general knowledge that Go Daddy is one of the advertisers on the upcoming Super Bowl. I think it's time to explain why we decided to do such a thing.

First, some Super Bowl facts:

1. A 30 second spot on the Super Bowl is currently selling for a list price of $2.4 million dollars. To that number add the production cost associated with making a decent commercial. That's about another million bucks. So the total investment to be a 30 second Super Bowl advertiser is about $3.4 million. It breaks down to be about $113,000 a second (time here is very preciousgrin).
2. Anywhere from 150 to 160 million people are expected to watch this year's Super Bowl. Over 50% of them tune in specifically to watch the commercials. That's right, they are watching just to see your commercial.
3. Because of its unique makeup, people's recall rate of the commercials that appear on the Super Bowl is higher than that of any other televised event during the year. Many people watch the game in groups that average a total of 6 people. Part of the fun of watching the game is discussing each commercial amongst the group. This adds considerably to the consumer recall of each commercial. It may also be one of the key reasons the recall rate is so very high.

Why Go Daddy is advertising on the Super Bowl:

1. My staff and I believe that we provide the very best customer experience and value offering in all the markets in which we compete. Our prices are among the lowest. We work very hard to make sure we keep things this way and stay as customer centric with our decisions as possible.
2. So we asked ourselves, if Go Daddy has such a strong value package, why doesn't everyone do business with us?
3. We commissioned a market research study to learn the answer to that question. We talked with many individuals who chose other registrars and hosting companies instead of Go Daddy. Upon talking to these individuals (many of whom settled for deals far worse than what we offered), we learned the exact reason why they didn't choose us. It was simple. They didn't know we existed.
4. We were already doing everything that made sense to reach our customers using on-line advertising. We spend a lot of money advertising with search engines and other on-line media. These advertising vehicles work well for us, but there's a large audience they don't reach. To reach these other people, we clearly need to try a different channel.
5. We realized that if we were going to find a way to reach all those customers who are not aware that Go Daddy exists, we needed to try something different. For this we decided to try traditional media (i.e. television, radio, US mail and print).
6. After hiring an advertising firm and a media purchasing firm that we were comfortable with, I suggested we kick the entire campaign off with an ad in the Super Bowl. At first this was a bit of a joke, but the more we thought about it and looked into the cost and benefits, it appeared to us that starting things off with the Super Bowl made quite a bit of sense indeed.

Our ad will be in the 1st Quarter
So we went ahead and purchased a 30 second spot during the Super Bowl. It will be the third spot during the fourth commercial break, after the game starts. We're assured it will be in the 1st quarter of the game.

We finished shooting the commercial this past Thursday in Los Angeles. I'm pretty much sworn to secrecy concerning the contents of the commercial, but have been cleared to tell that it will be quite different from any commercial you've seen during that game.

Here's the answers to some questions I've been asked by reporters and others, since it became known that Go Daddy is going to have a Super Bowl ad:

Q. How do you know that the Super Bowl ad will work for Go Daddy?
A. There are no guarantees. I don't know if it will work.

Q. Is the Super Bow ad a one shot deal?
A. Not really. We will be following up our Super Bowl ad with an extensive advertising campaign that will embrace television, radio and print.

Q. Do you expect to earn your investment back?
A. Not immediately and maybe never. What the Super Bowl ad will do is to lay the ground work for better recognition of our follow up campaign.

Q. What if the Super Bowl ad doesn't work at all? What will happen to Go Daddy?
A. You can be sure that I certainly want to see it work, but if it doesn't work at all we'll be just fine. The entire ad production costs and airtime have been paid for out of cash reserves earned last year. Many company owners would have taken this cash out of the company for themselves as a dividend. Not me. (What follows is the line that was misquoted by Brand Autopsy) I'd rather have a Super Bowl ad.