Lexus blocking GoDaddy commercial
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June 21, 2009 – 1:43 am
In a rather surprising move, Japanese automaker Lexus is blocking a GoDaddy commercial that was set to air twice during the upcoming US Open. In the TV commercial named “Speeding“, GoDaddy model Danica Patrick is driving a custom Ford Mustang, an American car.
Lexus is NBC’s main television sponsor of the sports event and it has enforced that no other automakers shall be allowed to advertise on the channel during the US Open broadcast.
You can look at Lexus’ decision from two points of view. On one side, it was an unlucky decision, because blocking a US company from advertising during a major tournament held in the United States won’t bring positive publicity for the Japanese company. On the other hand, Lexus and Ford clearly are competitors, so blocking the marketing efforts of a company that is in trouble already could increase Lexus’ chances of gaining on Ford in the United States. The only thing is, it is not Ford but GoDaddy, an Internet company, that wants to air its television commercial. So Lexus is blocking a technology company it’s not competing with, only because there is another car in that commercial?
GoDaddy isn’t selling cars. It is selling domains, as everybody clearly knows, and the TV commercial is in no way misleading in this regard. The conflict with Lexus isn’t necessarily bad for GoDaddy, though. The domain registrar company has already started to capitalize on this by issuing a press release about it to basically further push its brand and identity as an “American company”.
Oh yeah, is it possible that this is just a publicity stunt by GoDaddy? In any case, GD is going to benefit from this the one way or the other.
Copyright (C) 2003-2009 Dominik Mueller.
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Lexus blocking GoDaddy commercial
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Original post by Dominik Mueller