Team pulls together winning TV commercial in 19 days.
19 days.
That’s how much time the winners of Go Daddy’s TV commercial contest had to pull it all together once they heard about the domain name registrar’s contest.
But for producer Jessie Ottolini, director Francis De La Torre, and writer Lisa Waugh, it was worth the stress — they’re now a hundred thousand dollars richer and have been pushed onto the national television commercial stage almost overnight.
I talked to Ottolini and De La Torre this afternoon by phone, and the pair could hardly contain their excitement.
“The money is great, but the exposure is kind of the pinnacle,” explained De La Torre. Ottolini joked, “everyone’s already hitting me up, ‘can I borrow twenty bucks?'”.
The money got split a lot of ways, so they’re thinking of it as a bonus on top of the national exposure. The same goes for the actors, who were working with the hope of getting paid if the commercial was a success.
Now those actors have been plastered across national television. Go Daddy aired the winning commercial “Go Momma” during Sunday’s Indianapolis 500 broadcast. The commercial also ran during the Stanley Cup Finals.
“Go Momma” is a very different commercial from the domain registrar’s standard fare. It features a mom who gets tired of her kids calling her for recipes, so she uses Go Daddy to create a web site with her recipes.
“We did a little research on what Go Daddy already had as their commercials, and we kind of thought ‘let’s take a completely different approach'”, said Ottolini. “Less racy and edgy, but classy and memorable.”
Waugh originally came up with the concept for the commercial. The three knew it was risky since it was so different from Go Daddy’s usual marketing efforts, but they thought it could speak to the “recreational” user who’s looking for an inexpensive and easy way to get online.
The creators have been Go Daddy customers for several years, and Ottolini was thrilled to get a personal call from Bob Parsons telling them they had won the contest.
And although I don’t always agree with Parsons, I think he made the right call.
Josh says
Looks like something this years celeb apprentices could come up with in 1 day while Cyndi Lauper told 100 stories and Brett Michaels combed his hair.
Did they reach a real market with that, dont think so, jmo.
mike says
when do they ever reach real market?
you must be new
Josh says
lol I actually thought of that after typing it, big boobs and non sense was the old model so… you have a point. A commercial targeting the market would be a shock, maybe isnt funny enough.. I guess they discovered when people laugh or get a hard on they register names lol