You're watching the first ad in what would become a very long series of attention-getting Super Bowl ads for GoDaddy, the web-domain registar and hosting company.
The ad is a spoof of the Janet Jackson "wardrobe malfunction" mishegas that rocked the previous year's halftime show. And it seemed to generate an immediate response: Traffic to GoDaddy.com rose 378% over the average of the prior four Sundays, a lift second only to Budweiser.com's, according to ComScore Media Metrix.
While the racy spot was actually scheduled to air twice during Fox's coverage of Super Bowl XXXIX, the network pre-empted the second run with an in-house promo for "The Simpsons." After the game, Fox's then-ad sales president, Jon Nesvig, said the GoDaddy spot was pulled because it was "very much out of step with the tenor set by the other ads." (Fox also blocked Miller Brewing from running an ad during the pre-game program that made fun of Anheuser-Busch.) The reprise had been set to air in the final two minutes of the Patriots-Eagles nailbiter.
GoDaddy came back in 2006 with a spot simply titled "Strap," and would continue ginning up Super Bowl controversy, claims of censorship and general PR stunts all the way through Super Bowl XLIX in 2015. (The 2009 spot, "Baseball," returned to Congressional hearings, this time to chime in on Major League Baseball's steroids scandals.) In December 2015, however, the marketer declared its Super Bowl aims achived and promised to switch to a more targeted approach to advertising.
Director: Bryan Buckley. Production company: Hungry Man.
Creative director: Paul Cappelli. Copywriters: Aaron P. Brown, Paul Cappelli. Editing: Whitehouse, N.Y. Editor: Colby Parker.
BRAND: GoDaddy
YEAR: 2005
AGENCY: The Ad Store
SUPERBOWL: XXXIX
QUARTER AIRED: Q1