Go Daddy
This post was originally published on my first blog, hosted by Harvard Law School's Berkman Center.
I've been travelling between Boston and Washington a lot lately, and have been dipping into the bin of free magazines by the airline gate to keep stimulated until "electronic devices are permitted" in flight. Recently I picked up the Valentine's Day edition of Ad Age and came upon some interesting data.
If you watched the first half of the Super Bowl, you may have caught Go Daddy's ad spoofing Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction last year. If you did, statistics suggest you were shocked(!) and outraged(!): according to Insight Express, "700 Americans" surveyed rated the Go Daddy spot among the worst three, along with McDonald's "Lincoln fry" ad (?) and the Diet Pepsi P. Diddy truck piece (??).
But what Americans *did* suggests a different reaction:
1. Web hits in 30 minutes following ad airing (per ComScore): Go Daddy in second place, up 1600%, slightly behind Cadillac but more than double third-place Ameriquest.
2. Web hits 2/6 v. 2/5 (per Hitwise): Go Daddy, first place, up 260%, with ED drug Cialis a distant second at 155%.
3. Most "blog buzz" (per Intelliseek survey of >100k blogs/bboards): Go Daddy, first place, 6.1%, almost 50% ahead of second-place Pepsi.
What can we take away from all this?
1. I learned a new metric: "blog buzz". Now I'm curious to know how they measure it, and whether it's useful. They didn't teach this in business school 15 years ago. Here's where my research started -- anybody got any comments?
2. Next time I'm developing a complex multi-channel brand strategy, it's going to take work to beat cheesecake. Nikki Cappelli (nom de guerre of course) deserves a Clio. (Seriously, I'm too square to have the guts to go this route, but now I know where the cost-effectiveness bar is, and what we'd have to beat! Always important for left-brained types to remember...)
3. In blogging the ad's aftermath, Go Daddy President Bob Parsons reveals himself to be a hip and savvy marketer. Think about who his customers are (who is the typical buyer of domain names and associated services, after all?) and grok the genius of his strategy!
4. Note to market researchers: watch what consumers do, not what they say.
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