Simply Selling Sex

Let me ask you a question: If I wanted to buy a web domain, where would you tell me to go? If the first site that pops into your head isn’t GoDaddy.com, I’d like to know what is.

When I see the ads for Go Daddy, I’m bewildered at the company’s success. Somehow, Go Daddy managed to become the world’s largest domain registrar. You would never know that from its advertisements, though. Their strategy is strictly to get customers (and/or horny men?) to visit their homepage, effectively branding the site into their customers minds for when they eventually need a domain name.

The commercials never give any reason why Go Daddy is better than competitors. They never bring in celebrity endorsements—unless you count a showering Danica Patrick. The company forgoes everything that has ever been discovered about conventional persuasion and skips right to the sex appeal. In fact, most of the commercials don’t say what the company does at all!

We in the Internet marketing/PR world argue against the effectiveness of paid advertising. So how is it that these commercials—some of them banned–have helped drive Go Daddy to the top of its respective industry? Well, I’ve heard the three most powerful brands around are the words “free,” “sex” and “Harvard.” Well, if the GoDaddy.com advertising approach over the past four years isn’t evidence of that, I don’t know what is.