You are now entering Ad Space, a realm of commercials, brought before us so we might examine how they work, and discuss why we both love and hate them so. So it is written …

The Product:
GoDaddy.com

The Promotion:

The Pitch:
. . . I’m sorry, were we supposed to be selling something?

These commercials intrigue me. For reasons besides the … *ahem* obvious.

“Sex sells” is an old mantra; having scantily clad women strike sexually suggestive poses is nothing new in advertising. But what’s interesting about these commercials is how they seem ashamed of their own sex appeal.

It’s not just that they point out how all this lewdness has nothing to do with the service they’re selling. It’s that they portray their gyrating, nearly-nude models as making all the people around them uncomfortable.

Normally, sexy commercials are all about living the fantasy, portraying a world of erotic funtimes that the target audience is presumably into, and promising them that, with the right product, they can be a part of it. But these GoDaddy ads, they acknowledge that a lot of people aren’t into watching women take their clothes off in public, and that it can just as easily turn people off rather than on.

Why do it then? Why fill your ads with sexual content that you yourselves seem to feel is crossing a line, and that will likely create as many negative impressions as positive ones?

Because, in GoDaddy’s case, what kind of impression they made wasn’t so important; they just needed to make an impression, period.

When someone sees an ad for Budweiser beer or Bounty paper towels, they can pick some up the next time they go grocery shopping. The ad doesn’t need much staying power in order to have an effect.

But GoDaddy is a site that helps people register domain names. That’s not a service most people are in the market for … until, one day, they are. And you can’t count on someone just happening to see a GoDaddy ad in the narrow window between “I need to get a website” and “okay, now I have a website”.

For these ads to work, they need to leave a lasting impression. They need to be so memorable (for good or for ill) that, even if you’re not in the market for GoDaddy’s services, their name and gimmick will still stick in your head. So that, years later, when you decide to create a website to sell your homemade cactus sculptures, you’ll still remember GoDaddy as a site that does that sort of thing.

And, while there are a lot of ways commercials can stick in your memory, GoDaddy opted to go with over-the-top, pushing-the-limits-of-good-taste sexuality. Whether it makes you want to look away, or to never not look away, it definitely makes an impact.

Basically, these ads work like this:

“SEX!! … Now that I have your attention – ”