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A word from our sponsors

34 comments on A word from our sponsors

A word from our sponsors

godaddy.jpg: I’m in Florida at the iMedia conference with top online ad clients and agencies and top online publishers (I’m giving my blogboy spiel too early in the a.m.). Tonight, ESPN.com is playing host to a Super Bowl party, of course, with wings and cheeseburgers and commercials. Ad Age ad critic Bob Garfield (also On The Media’s cohost) is even here to give his expert perspective. The room is noisy; the beer is flowing; the pizza’s not bad. There is the occasional whoop at any of the many interceptions. There are no whoops at the commercials (since they’ve all been castrated by the PTC et al: the tapiocization of American media and culture).

Once, just once, silence conquers the room: When the GoDaddy.com commercial plays with its mockery of the prigs and prudes of Congress and the FCC… and one big, overstretched, uh, brand.

Sex sells. Doh!

: I’ll admit it: I had to ask which ones were the guys in green. I am a shame to my gender.

: Garfield’s reviews are in the new issue of AdAge (which is not online, damn them). He gives 3.5 stars to GoDaddy.com, along with Visa’s superhero commercial and a few others. He gives one star (generous) to the big-huh MBNA Gladys Knight ad.

: I’m delighted and relieved that the Fox guys doing the halftime wrapup talk just as fast as I do.

: It’s so damned sad that a Beatle is now a symbol of safety.

Damn, I’m old.

This is your grandfather’s Super Bowl.

34 responses to “A word from our sponsors”

  1. Ruth Avatar
    Ruth

    he’s a dear, but afraid Paul’s vocal chords aren’t up to the job. Sweet, but strained.

  2. daudder Avatar
    daudder

    you must not have heard the same halftime shoe, ruth. Paul was great. Still brings the chills…
    And I must say that the Ray Charles tribute was just fine.

  3. joy Avatar
    joy

    Jeff, you didn’t know that the Philadelphia Eagles were playing? Geez, for a guy who works with nj.com, you should know Philadelphia/South Jersey is a major media market.

  4. Curt Avatar
    Curt

    I had suggested last year that Up With People could use the work.

  5. Ruth Avatar
    Ruth

    OOkay, we heard different shows,daudder, I heard the first I wanna Hold Your Hand stuff. Loud, confident, deep intoned resonance. give it up, Paul had command, but the vocal stuff was strained.

  6. gandhi Avatar
    gandhi

    Superbowl USA… great time to release severe budget cuts eh?

  7. Michael Zimmer Avatar
    Michael Zimmer

    You can see both the GoDaddy ad that aired, and a longer version here.

  8. Independent George Avatar
    Independent George

    I think Mickey Kaus has the best response from the other side. I can’t figure out how to permalink to his site, so I’ll just copy & paste:
    It’s Not the Nipple: A Super Sunday reminder to Frank Rich and other righteous anti-FCCers: The big problem with last year’s Janet Jackson/Justin Timberlake halftime show was not that people saw Jackson’s breast. It wasn’t what Jackson did that was offensive. It was what Timberlake did. Here was a massively popular, relatively hip singer whose message was that it was a hip, transgressive thing for men to rip clothes off women when they feel like it (which is quite often). I watched the game with a group of non-evangelical, non-moralistic dads who were uniformly horrified. The problem for them wasn’t sex–their kids see flesh all the time in videos–but a form of sexism, not prudery but piggishness. Surely there are some types of behavior–homophobia, perhaps, or racism, or Republicanism–that even Frank Rich wouldn’t want implicitly endorsed during a telecast watched by most of the country’s teens and pre-teens. Yet the press has effectively recast this complicated issue as an uncomplicated case of “Nipple-gate,” of blue-noses overreacting to the sight of a breast. No wonder red staters respond negatively when New Yorkers call them simplistic.
    I didn’t think it was a big deal when I saw it, but I’m a 27 year-old guy with no kids. In retrospect, what Kaus is saying now is very persuasive. It’s too bad nobody was making that case a year ago.

  9. Eileen Avatar
    Eileen

    O just bite me, Ruth. Paul was absolutely fabulous. Strained? The only thing that’s strained is your attempt to find something good to say about anything. Maybe you’re due for a hearing aid tune-up, along with an attitude adjustment?
    The Anheuser Busch ad of returning GI’s was also superb. And gee, talk this year will actually be about what a great game And half time we were treated to instead of a sleazy side show. Life must surely be going to hell.

  10. Jon Avatar
    Jon

    This mole hill-turned-mountain reflects something much more important, and in the long term, more interesting. That is, the belly-aching on the right highlights once again the tenuousness of the alliance between “social” conservatives and “economic” conservatives. The traditional religious Right sees a culture at risk; the laissez faire free marketeers want media markets, concentration and ownership unfettered by the heavy hand of the government. Unfortunately for them, they can’t have it both ways…
    For more, see “Markets, Morality and Football”

  11. Mumblix Grumph Avatar
    Mumblix Grumph

    This is your grandfather’s Super Bowl.
    Er…do you mean the FOOTBALL part was actually the main story this year?
    I can live with that.

  12. Eileen Avatar
    Eileen

    Oh, and Jeff. It would be great if you’d (also)post a nice crotch shot here of the hot guy walking down the sidewalk in that Pepsi ad. Yeah, sex sells, and that was a nice, steamy ad, until they had the obligatory gay guy checking out his butt at the end. Way to ruin it for hetero women…

  13. michael Avatar
    michael

    I am interested to hear thoughts on the inaction heroes spot? I thought the ad was unique but I was suprised to see it was for degree deodorant.

  14. Gregg Avatar
    Gregg

    until they had the obligatory gay guy checking out his butt at the end. Way to ruin it for hetero women…
    How does that “ruin it,” Eileen? Does having a man lust after the same thing you do make it less appealling somehow?

  15. Kat Avatar
    Kat

    It would if the guy with the nice butt was gay also. No thanks.

  16. Eileen Avatar
    Eileen

    Yep. Just like a cold shower. And kind of like my very close gay male friend who used to always lust after my ex-husband…..teasingly, of course. After about the 1,000th time it got to be very, Very old.
    Yeah, hear me ‘ad moguls’: give Hetero Women something in the ‘sex sells’ department for a change. We’re sick and tired of vacuum cleaner starring roles and dish soap commercials (man, and I was saying that same thing 30 years ago!). Give me a steamy guy without another guy trying to cut in on the action at the same time.

  17. Del Avatar
    Del

    Go godaddy! That was one of the best commercials…made congress look like a bunch of morons, ha! – and that chick was HAAWWWT. The other ones I liked were the ones with the monkeys, heh. Boy, there sure were alot of commercials with monkeys weren’t there?. What was that all about? I also liked the one with the guy cooking and his cat spilling the sauce, and then him standing there holding the cat by the neck with a knife in is other hand, LOL – that was the winner IMO.

  18. Brad Avatar
    Brad

    Well, speaking of prigs and prudes, after the first ad aired the NFL and Fox decided to pull GoDaddy’s second ad that was supposed to run during the second 2 minute warning. How ridiculous is that? GoDaddy

  19. Eileen Avatar
    Eileen

    “I also liked the one with the guy cooking and his cat spilling the sauce, and then him standing there holding the cat by the neck with a knife in is other hand, LOL – that was the winner IMO.”
    To each….
    You probably also got a good yuck about the dead guy in the convertible ad, eh?
    Play many video games?

  20. Del Avatar
    Del

    Boy, I think somebody here needs to lighten up. Pssst, the cat wasn’t dead – it just looked that way, heh.
    IMo The ad with the Queer Eye guy would have been good if he had just took a glance and kept going; they overdid it by having him turn around and walk after the guy.
    Re: Mickey Kaus, I’ve seen that same kind of thing done in musicals and other shows…men ripping off pieces of women’s clothing and revealing a skimpier costume underneath. I think if she would have had a bra underneath it would have been sort of a dumb thing to do, but there wouldn’t have been a controversy. Thats just the left trying to put a PC, ‘sexism’ spin on it. It really was the nakedness, but that wasn’t CBS’s or MTV’s fault – Janet Jackson did that herself as a publicity stunt. This same kind of PC spin is going on with the erectile dysfunction ads, thats the left reacting to the right-wing prudes by attacking what they see as ‘male’ and ‘corporate’, instead of just arguing for free speech in general.

  21. eddy Avatar
    eddy

    Eileen said:
    “Yeah, hear me ‘ad moguls’: give Hetero Women something in the ‘sex sells’ department for a change. We’re sick and tired of vacuum cleaner starring roles and dish soap commercials (man, and I was saying that same thing 30 years ago!). Give me a steamy guy without another guy trying to cut in on the action at the same time.”
    Didn’t we used to get that in the form of those Pepsi commercials where the muscular construction worker would take off his shirt outside and drink a Pepsi while all the women inside the office lusted after him?

  22. Eileen Avatar
    Eileen

    “Pssst, the cat wasn’t dead – it just looked that way, heh.”
    Pssst, duh, Del. Heh. It’s hard to ‘lighten up’ when violence and death are diminished and glorified at every turn.
    I’m not into violence. I don’t get off on it or get my yucks that way. As I said, to each, eh?
    How about injecting a little class, style, imagination, intellect – or, how about some kindness or even Love in the pic for a change? I know, that’s Not edgy, not gay laden, not violent, not sexist, not sleazy..
    If just plain ‘ole nice ain’t in your world any more, too bad and way too sad for you.

  23. Eileen Avatar
    Eileen

    eddy,
    Well, sit me right down. Sorry I missed it :)

  24. Del Avatar
    Del

    I think youre taking things way too seriously. I like all kinds of art, including ….eh, those wimpy kinds that you mentioned. Seriously.
    I did not like the convertible ad. I can’t explain why exactly, it just wasn’t funny – the cat ad made me laugh. I’ll bet the overwhelming majority of people laughed too.
    BTW, your last name isn’t Dover by any chance is it? I think I know you from somewhere.
    That was a joke. Im sorry, that was low class, edgy, juvenile, etc… wasn’t it? It is sad, I know – but I yam what I yam.

  25. Eileen Avatar
    Eileen

    I love jokes. I didn’t take it any other way. Yeah, with my name, you might think I’d have heard that one before, eh? And a few others…
    Actually, I’m not being overly serious at all. I’ve been laughing, here, all the way. I’m being (probably overly) talkative (sorry!), lamenting the Lack for hetero women,,,,,,the violence, and the sad state I see in ads and media today.
    Beyond that, hey, I Almost laughed at the cat.

  26. bosco Avatar
    bosco

    did anyone notice the SHAPE of the music stage at half-time? it was shaped like a cross and it fit perfectly the tv screen.
    me thinks this was intentional. a prude yet politcal pandering response to last years nipplegate.

  27. Jeff Avatar
    Jeff

    Evidently, sex sells too well. GoDaddy.com had a second ad scheduled that was pulled by Fox due to complaints by the NFL. See http://www.bobparsons.com for info on the ad and why the second one was pulled.

  28. Eileen Avatar
    Eileen

    Sex sells well for whom? You’ve only repeated yet another poster’s comments, here. Don’t you read? Jeff Obviously posted the Big Boob pic, but where’s his pic that satisfies women? Where’s the big dick pic?
    Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm? The locker room is still the same as it was 30 years ago. The ‘ole boys club is still just that.

  29. Eileen Avatar
    Eileen

    Correction: I should have said: Big Dick Pic.

  30. Gregg Avatar
    Gregg

    First: give Hetero Women something in the ‘sex sells’ department for a change
    Then: It’s hard to ‘lighten up’ when violence and death are diminished and glorified at every turn.
    Diminish & glorify a person’s body = good
    Diminish & glorify violence & death = bad

  31. Eileen Avatar
    Eileen

    Tasteful sex good. Violence of all kinds bad.

  32. Ruth Avatar
    Ruth

    Eileen
    No thanks

  33. gigglechick Avatar
    gigglechick

    yep, the ads were ho-hum… i sat there with pen poised hoping to jot down a slew of fantastic commercials… nothing. merely a handful of mediocre schlock… the list of all of ’em is up on my site though…

  34. Jon Lester Avatar
    Jon Lester

    So is the GoDaddy.com commercial available in HD? I think it invites slow-motion review…