Godaddy Essay

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Recommended: Portrayal of women in advertising

Since the first debut on the 2005 Super Bowl, GoDaddy airs the most shocking advertisements every consecutive year. Racecar driver Danica Patrick promotes the Internet domain registrar services on GoDaddy, notorious for sexism and using essentially pornographic images to publicize nothing of the company’s aspects with naked women. Since the companies’ approach increased attention and revenue, the GoDaddy commercials caused waves of airing over sexualized women in extremely demeaning scenarios in order to gain notice.
Go Daddy, a privately held company, specializes largely in Internet domain registry. But, the name ‘GoDaddy’ makes people instantly think of barely-clothed women rather than a web hosting service, exactly what the company wanted. Before the era of Danica Patrick as the celebrity endorser, most of Go Daddy's early TV ads aired during primetime starring a WWE Diva, Candice Michelle. These ads featured “GoDaddy girls,” who wore skimpy tank tops and paraded themselves with no connection with the company. But the commercials then were not as distasteful as today. Though the ads contributed in some sort of sexual-related theme, they could not capture the attention of the viewers to become customers. The company decided to revamp their look by introducing the new face of GoDaddy, Danica Patrick, to attract new business. The first commercial debuting Patrick, called "Speeding", features Patrick getting pulled over by a female cop. The cop, wanting to become a "Go Daddy Girl,” unbuttons her shirt and shows the trademark tank top. The GoDaddy Company had a strategic plane by choosing this as their first commercial with Patrick, not because she signifies relatable to women, but because of the over-sexualized thirty-second sk...

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...arting her own business, with he help of GoDaddy. This successfully showed that an ad could still be effective in gaining customers even with fully clothed women that do not do suggestive stunts for commercial attention.
Clearly GoDaddy heard complaints, and took sizeable steps to eliminate their reputation of meaningless and offensive ads. If nothing else, this can be proof that the Internet uproar can be used as a powerful marketing tool for change, and to realize that the Super Bowl is not controlled by the male gaze, but the female scrutiny as well. It seems that GoDaddy is ready to turn over a new page by débuting an ad campaign that will move away from naked models and perplexing stripteases. The new ads are more conservative and focus on the services GoDaddy offers, such as self-sufficient and smart women starting a small business with GoDaddy by their side.

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