Erotic comedy made in Madison, banned from TV

The steamy Godaddy.com ad you saw during the second quarter of the Super Bowl wasn't the first one the company submitted to ABC for approval. Nor, apparently, was it the second. Or third.

No, it was the fourteenth.

And every one of them were made by a Madison-based company.

As the Mercury News reports, the Internet firm had some trouble getting the Disney-owned network to accept the notion that professional football fans might also enjoy a little cleavage:

For the second year in a row, Godaddy.com and Super Bowl ads are synonymous. Last year, the Web services got one ad into the Super Bowl and then Fox yanked the second one for broadcast.

It seemed the network didn't like the steamy ad featuring a lovely, scantily clad woman testifying before Congress.

This year, according to the blog of CEO Bob Parsons, the company submitted 13 ads to ABC that were rejected.

Godaddy.com, for its part, has created one of the funniest and saddest webpages on the Internet, documenting this whole ordeal. All 14 ads are available for download (except for the ones that got canned before they were even shot – there are storyboards for those) and some of them are downright hilarious.

My favorite commercials of the batch would certainly be the “Godfather”-themed ones, which the site aptly describes:

Inspired by a classic film, Go Daddy's marketing team decides to make the network "an offer they can't refuse" (in the commercial, that is). Unfortunately, the network did refuse and we went back to the studio...

There are several variations on this one – each, apparently, scrapped before it could air – and the highlight would surely have to be the entry that features the Godaddy.com girl popping out of bed whilst wearing a horse's head.

Now, to be sure, this is not government censorship. ABC is a private company and no one is claiming that the FCC engaged in prior-restraint. But what isn't clear is whether these ads were yanked because ABC didn't like them, the NFL didn't like them or, in a post-”wardrobe malfunction” era, someone working for one of the two was afraid of incurring the wrath of Kevin J. Martin.

Finally, in the interest of full disclosure, this website is hosted by Godaddy.com. And, yes, I purchased the company's services after learning about them on a commercial during last year's Super Bowl.