GoDaddy’s Super Bowl ads may have raised eyebrows but they raked in cash

Controversial domain company GoDaddy is at it again. Its recent Super Bowl commercial with super model Bar Rafaeli kissing “nerd” Jesse Heiman seems to have banked the company some serious change.

The ad, which raised some eyebrows over its stereotypical depictions of nerddom, turned out to be the right strategy as GoDaddy managed to break its current sales record. According Mashable, the company experienced its biggest ever sales day after the ad flighted. GoDaddy reports that:

• Hosting sales jumped 45%.
• Dot-com domain sales rose 40%.
• New mobile customers increased by 35%.
• The company added 10 000 customers in total.

GoDaddy’s campaign slogan is “smart meets sexy”. The company tries to depict these two aspects by having Rafaeli being the sexy and Heimann the smarts.

While the depiction of Heinman as your stereotypical pocket-protector-wearing nerd did raise a few eyebrows, the fact that it included an open and lingering kiss also caused an uproar as many people thought the ad awkward and “explicit”.

A less provocative offering is GoDaddy’s other Super Bowl ad. ‘Perfect Match’ plays on the notion of couples bickering, as the commercial depicts wives asking their husbands about their ‘big idea’ and that they should register it online. The ad finishes with a wealthy man in a private jet having registered his ‘big idea’ being waited upon by an attractive hostess and the pilot being GoDaddy’s poster girl Danica Patrick.