The tradition of spoofing Go Daddy’s .CO commercial has continued in 2012. Name.com posted this humorous video of Denver Broncos star running back Willis McGahee in a spoof of Godaddy’s “Body Paint” Super Bowl commercial.
With all due respect to McGahee, I prefer the Godaddy commercial starring Godaddy girl Natalia Velez.
Here’s some big news heading into DomainFest conference week. According to a press release distributed this morning, Sedo and Go Daddy have entered into a new partnership allowing domain names listed for sale at Sedo to be shown to potential buyers at GoDaddy.
The obvious reason this is important is that people looking to register domain names will be shown domain names that are listed for sale at Sedo. A person registering a name may have an interest in upgrading to a far superior name if given the opportunity, and I believe Sedo has the largest domain marketplace.
Over the last several months and maybe even years, companies like Sedo and Afternic have been stressing that domain owners who want to sell their domain names need to have them priced. I would imagine that only domain names that are available with buy it now prices at Sedo will be shown to buyers at Go Daddy, enabling them to buy the domain name right away. Afternic domain names have been listed at Godaddy since October (coincidentally announced at the last major domain conference).
The questions I would have for Sedo and Go Daddy are:
Congratulations to Sedo and Godaddy on this big news. The press release is below.
I learned that Go Daddy was nominated for two Stevie Awards in the Customer Service Department of the Year – Computer Services category and the Best Use of Technology in Customer Service – Computer Hardware, Software, Services, Electronics, or Telecommunications category.
According to the award website, “The Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service honor and generate public recognition of the accomplishments of sales, customer service, and call/contact center professionals worldwide.” There are dozens of categories in which companies in different industries and of different sizes are competing. Judges for the awards come from some of the largest companies in the world, like Microsoft, AT&T, Marriott, Canon, and many others.
Just yesterday, I wrote a comment about Go Daddy’s customer service team. Although I think it’s sort of tacky to quote myself, I wrote “for people without reps at Godaddy, the company has great 24/7 US-based customer service. I can’t recall ever being dissatisfied with an issue at GD.”
Companies also competing for the Customer Service Department of the Year award are: Reputation.com, BUMI, CenterBeam, Datapipe, and and Rosetta Stone. Companies competing for the Best Use of Technology in Customer Service – Computer Hardware, Software, Services, Electronics, or Telecommunications include CrunchTime! Information Systems, L-com Inc., OnStar, Rosetta Stone, and VIZIO, Inc.
Congratulations to the company on this honor and good luck to them. It’s nice to see the company honored with these nominations.
A little over a week ago, I expressed my dismay that Bari Meyerson no longer works as my Account Executive at Moniker. Today, I want to share some reasons why having an Account Executive or Account Representative at a domain registrar is important to me.
Obviously we all put a lot of trust into our domain registrar. Our assets are digital, and there is always a concern they could be stolen and pushed to another account or transferred out all together. Should something like that happen, the process to recover domain names is a bit opaque, and having someone to help with that process is assuring. Knowing I have someone to email who would advocate for me and help me is important and reassuring.
In addition to this worse case scenario, there are every day issues that come up. There have been a number of times where transfers were denied for various reasons, and it’s always helpful to have someone tell me exactly what the problem was. Further, instead of having to submit a ticket to resolve the issue and then submit a ticket to get a refund and re-try the transaction, it has been helpful to have someone willing to make this easier and expedite it.
When I receive renewal notices via email, I am often away from my desk. It’s great to be able to forward the email to my account representative and ask him or her to take care of the renewal for me. It’s one less thing for me to worry about, and it also means that I won’t end up transferring the domain name elsewhere.
Oftentimes, domain registrars are larger companies with various products and services (hosting, web design, marketing…etc). When a problem arises, it’s nice to know you have an ally within the company that will speak with the people who can get things done when they aren’t able to do it themselves. My account representatives know what steps need to be taken to resolve an issue or head off potential trouble, and they are proactive on my behalf.
In various domain related surveys I’ve taken over the years, I’ve been asked to state the importance of having an account representative and/or good customer service compared to other needs like pricing, security, back-end user interface, additional products and service offerings, and other features/aspects. I am pretty sure that customer service was the first or second choice for me – always.
With a dedicated account representative, it’s likely I will do more business with the domain registrar. I am inclined to work with people I like and trust, and if I have an established relationship with an account person, it’s more likely I will register and renew domain names at that registrar.
I understand that it wouldn’t be economically feasible for companies to assign Account Executives to each client, but I can tell you that it does impact my decision when it comes to registering and transferring domain names.
Although GoDaddy generally waits until Super Bowl Sunday to post their commercials, the company has decided to post at least one earlier than normal this year. On the Go Daddy home page, there’s a small banner below the fold that says “Be the first to see our new Ad! Click to see why Dot CO domains from Go Daddy have never looked so sexy!”
Although embedding is disabled for the video, you can visit Godaddy’s website to see the commercial. As I mentioned, the .CO GoDaddy Girl is Colombian model Natalia Velez, who looks beautiful in the commercial.
As you will see, there’s also a call to action encouraging viewers to see “a lot more now” on the GoDaddy.CO website, although I couldn’t find a link to the video on the .CO website.
Overall, I think it’s a pretty good commercial from Go Daddy and the .CO Registry, since their objective is to send people to the website to learn more about why they think businesses should consider buying and using a .CO domain name.
I just read an article in USA Today discussing Go Daddy’s Super Bowl commercials, and I believe it revealed the name of the new GoDaddy girl that will be starring in the .CO-specific commerical. It’s not Joan Rivers.
Although the article does not mention the model’s name, the caption has revealed what was once a guarded secret. The caption reads, “Danica Patrick, left, and Jillian Michaels paint Colombian model Natalia Velez in a Super Bowl commercial being shot at GoDaddy.com’s offices in Scottsdale, Ariz.”
According to a variety of sources online, Natalia Velez is a professional model from MedellÃn, Colombia, and she was born in 1985. You can watch the video embedded above to see more shots of Ms. Velez, and you can watch the video below to learn more about Godaddy, its Super Bowl advertising strategy and see some shots from the commercial filming.
It’s a far cry from last year’s commercial with Joan Rivers.
