I was going through my spam email folder this morning to see if Gmail inadvertently marked legitimate email as spam, and I wanted to warn you about something that appears to be another GoDaddy phishing attempt masking as a discount offer. You’ll recall that last month there was a GoDaddy Whois verification phishing email that went around.
There were five things that indicated to me that this was not a real GoDaddy email:
I pre-registered two new domain names last week at GoDaddy. Both of these domain names have meaning to me and my company, and I purchased them for the pre-registration price. This means that if someone else spends more to buy them sooner than me, they would get the right to them. In addition, if someone else pre registers either or both of these new domain names, they will go to a private auction.
A couple of days ago, I received an email from GoDaddy to let me know that one of the domain names couldn’t be purchased. The email said, “Your purchase could not be completed, therefore we will be refunding the cost of registration.” Upon cursory review, it seems that this domain name was registered by someone else at a different registrar. No big deal.
This morning, I received another email from GoDaddy about the second domain name. The company informed me that I would need to acknowledge a
GoDaddy had two Super Bowl commercials this year, and the one that struck more of a chord for me was the commercial featuring a new spokesperson for the company, Gwen, an engineer who quit her job during the Super Bowl commercial.
There are several things I liked about this commercial, and I also want to share why the commercial resonated with me:
According to the backstory I read, Gwen
GoDaddy CEO Blake Irving was interviewed on CNBC this morning to discuss the 2014 GoDaddy Super Bowl commercial and how the company’s strategy has shifted over this last year. Although the company probably won’t make news for having a risque Super Bowl commerical this year, it has been making news because of the dramatic shift in its Super Bowl ad strategy.
There have been many people questioning the new campaign, and I think Irving answers the question about why GoDaddy is no longer focusing on its sexy commercials: “when you have 80% brand recognition, you really need to describe what you do to our customers. We don’t need to get attention anymore. we need to have folks understand what we do and who we do it for.” I think this is a very good point. Gone are the days that GoDaddy was known primarily for its provocative Super Bowl commercials, and now that people know the GoDaddy brand, it’s time to explain what the company does and how it can help small business owners.
I think this is a good explanation and it certainly makes sense. We’ll soon learn if this was the right strategy for the company.
Here’s the video of the CNBC segment with Blake Irving:
It looks like GoDaddy has released its 2014 Super Bowl commercial, and it’s quite different from the Super Bowl commercials that helped make the company a household name. Instead of press about banned commercials, “uncensored” commercials found online, and the GoDaddy girls taking on a prominent role in the commercial, the recent branding change from GoDaddy takes center stage.
This year’s GoDaddy Super Bowl commercial features
