Last week, Bullish, the new agency launched by Deutsch veterans Michael Duda and Brent Vartan last year, released a teaser for its Super Bowl for Go Daddy which hinted at how the agency would “personify the Internet” in its big game ad promoting the new website building tool GoCentral. Now the agency has released the full ad, with the roomba-riding cats of the teaser just a small segment of the Internet-fueled spot.
The spot opens with a young man introducing himself as the Internet as he wakes up to reveal a “Plug Life” tattoo as mail flies through his window to the sound of “You’ve got mail.” He heads to the shower, where he takes the ice bucket challenge, walks past a room full of roomba cats and heads out to a sporting a vanity plate and an “Is this real life?” bumper sticker. It’s all set to Rick Astley‘s “Never Gonna Give You Up,” apparently the official song of the Internet.
Built around squeezing as many popular memes into the spot as possible, the ad manages to celebrate all things Internet in its 30 seconds. It ends with the line, “The internet loves what you’re doing, so build a site in under an hour with GoDaddy.”
Say what you will about the meme-mining approach, the effort is certainly an evolution from the brand’s early days of relying on Nascar driver Danica Patrick to attract attention.
“We keep rewriting the playbook every year, and this year’s another example,” GoDaddy senior vice president of brand Carole Irgang told Adweek.
Bullish was set to have another spot in the Super Bowl with its big game ad for GNC, but the NFL pulled the plug on the effort, citing the brand’s sale of supplements containing drugs the league bans players from taking.