• by February 8, 2005

GONE DADDY, GONE, BUT DEFINITELY NOT FORGOTTEN - The only thing better than buying a spot on the Super Bowl, is getting your ad rejected from it. The media buy only guarantees you 30-seconds (more if you're a big sport) of time in front of the nation's TV viewers. Getting rejected assures you countless media impressions on TV, in print, as well as a perpetual audience on the Internet. And if you're lucky enough to get the old switcheroo at the very last minute (actually the last two minutes) of the Big Game, you may just land yourself an Advertising Column in The New York Times.

We can almost hear Nikki Cappelli, the buxom character in the GoDaddy.com commercial, exclaiming, "Omigosh!," when Fox executives decided to pull the second airing of the spot Sunday night, after getting some complaints about the first airing from the NFL.

Why GoDaddy.com, a Web domain registration service, would have wanted to run the spot a second time, we're not sure. But getting it rejected by Fox assured it of two things: 1) It pocketed $2.4 million in savings; and 2) It assured heavy traffic to the Internet for people who either wanted to view it again, or missed it the first time. In fact, according to TiVo's research, it was the most replayed element of the entire Super Bowl.

The ironic thing about the rejection though, is that the publicity surrounding it is likely to send more viewers to see the entire 1:45 version of the spot on GoDaddy.com's landing page that might otherwise have escaped their attention.

Frankly, we're not sure what all the hoopla is about. Fox had already run the spot, but the second one was pulled. It had already passed the networks standards and practices muster. But somehow, someone got to Fox sales chief Jon Nesvig who gave the order to nip Nikki. At least Jon's taking the heat for it, issuing a statement that: "it became obvious to us that its content was very much out of step with the tenor set by the other ads and programming broadcast by Fox on Super Bowl Sunday, so Fox made the decision to drop its repeat airing."

While we applaud Fox's content sensitivity concerning its Super Bowl viewers, we wonder if this isn't the same network that has aired "Married With Children," "Temptation Island," and "The Littlest Groom."

Anyway, we suspect the whole thing was concocted and that Fox, the NFL and maybe even GoDaddy.com were in on the hoax. We mean, the game was actually kind of interesting this year, but without GoDaddy's spot there would have been little day-after water cooler buzz. And it's that word of mouth stuff that's what makes the Super Bowl truly super and a media event.

Of course advertising rejections aren't new. Calvin Klein realized humongous media impressions residuals when it developed its infamous "kiddie porn" TV spots in the '80s, and ad impresario Jerry Della Femina was a master of getting the media to write and talk about ads that were submitted, but rejected by the networks.

What's changed is that the Internet has made the whole thing far more viral and has given consumers the opportunity to access the spots directly without the benefit of the TV's middlemen.