GoDad­dy has a long his­to­ry of push­ing the enve­lope with its Super Bowl ads. The brand has pulled a com­mer­cial that was met by a back­lash from con­sumers, but there is wide­spread spec­u­la­tion the con­tro­ver­sy was inten­tion­al. And it’s a strat­e­gy that works for them year after year.

The day before Bud­weis­er released its long-await­ed 2015 Super Bowl spot fea­tur­ing the tri­umphant return of its plucky pup­py, Inter­net domain reg­is­trar and web host­ing com­pa­ny GoDad­dy announced it was pulling its own pup­py ad and work­ing on an alter­nate 30-sec­ond spot for game day.

GoDad­dy, which is no stranger to con­tro­ver­sial Super Bowl con­tent, had said in an ear­li­er press release that it intend­ed to air the spot, Jour­ney Home, with a gold­en retriev­er pup­py and long­time spokes­woman Dan­i­ca Patrick to “reflect the jour­ney of many small busi­ness own­ers who have to be tena­cious to tri­umph.”

How­ev­er, the small busi­ness own­er in this case was a pup­py breed­er who sold the dog via her GoDad­dy web­site, which elicit­ed neg­a­tive con­sumer reac­tion after it was released on Jan­u­ary 27.

GoDaddy’s New Stars

Pri­or to the ad’s debut, CMO Barb Rechter­man told Momen­tol­ogy the brand had shift­ed in recent years from brand aware­ness to a focus on its util­i­ty to small busi­ness own­ers.

“When we entered the Super Bowl [11 years ago], we were a lit­tle com­pa­ny going into the Super Bowl and try­ing to sep­a­rate our­selves a bit from Bud­weis­er, who had mul­ti­ple ads, and Pep­si, etc., and his­tor­i­cal­ly the ads were real­ly more about brand aware­ness,” Rechter­man said.

That brand aware­ness typ­i­cal­ly meant using super­mod­els in sala­cious spots, but Rechter­man not­ed the new stars of its ads are sim­ply a dif­fer­ent kind of super­mod­el.

“You might not call them Bar Rafaelis, but, in GoDaddy’s eyes, [small busi­ness own­ers] are the super­heroes of this coun­try,” she said.

But it was not meant to be.

A Planned Controversy?

In a blog post, GoDad­dy CEO Blake Irv­ing wrote about the con­tro­ver­sy and said the brand would pull the spot, run­ning a dif­fer­ent ad “we hope…makes you laugh,” while reas­sur­ing con­sumers the GoDad­dy pup­py “came to us from a rep­utable and lov­ing breed­er.”

But many think it was a delib­er­ate attempt to drum up press.

“Obvi­ous­ly it is their MO,” writes Augus­tine Fou, the self-described Dig­i­tal Con­sigliere.

Jason Bur­by, pres­i­dent of the Amer­i­c­as at cre­ative agency Pos­si­ble, agreed.

“I think this is all planned,” Bur­by said. “When have they shied away from con­tro­ver­sy? I am will­ing to bet they are lov­ing the con­tro­ver­sy. Yes, it is away from the bla­tant sex­u­al nature of past ads, so it allows them to say they are clean­ing it up, but, in the same way, this allows them to get atten­tion and break through the noise of Super Bowl week.”

In an email, a GoDad­dy rep wrote, sim­ply, “Not a ploy.”

But, Bur­by adds, “They will sure­ly deny it was inten­tion­al or planned, apol­o­gize and con­tin­ue to keep it in the news by doing so.”

So, too, said Michael Hussey, CEO of social media audi­ence ana­lyt­ics firm Stat­So­cial.

“This is straight out of the GoDad­dy PR play­book. Mil­lions of peo­ple are see­ing the GoDad­dy brand name today that might nev­er have noticed before,” he said. “It works for them every year, like clock­work.”

Is All Publicity Good Publicity?

In addi­tion, Hussey also notes GoDad­dy has a unique busi­ness mod­el in which it is “a major pain in the neck to change to a dif­fer­ent domain and web host­ing com­pa­ny” and so their cus­tomer reten­tion rates “are like­ly very high and some­thing like this is going to dri­ve a lot more new cus­tomers,” which, he adds, is many more than they’ll lose.

“Because of the nature of their busi­ness, GoDad­dy obvi­ous­ly believes all press is good press,” Hussey adds.

The ad “was either the dumb­est attempt to cre­ate a con­tro­ver­sial ad that I’ve heard of in years…or it was a delib­er­ate attempt to gen­er­ate buzz ahead of the Super Bowl,” echoes Greg Jar­boe, pres­i­dent of Inter­net mar­ket­ing ser­vices firm SEO-PR. “In oth­er words, the pup­py was being used as a ‘stalk­ing horse,’ i.e. a false pre­text con­ceal­ing some­one’s real inten­tions.”

Connecting With Consumers: GoDaddy vs. Budweiser

Regard­less of GoDaddy’s intent, Budweiser’s Lost Dog spot, which debuted Jan­u­ary 28, had near­ly 1 mil­lion views and quick­ly count­ing in its first day and, per Top­sy, the relat­ed hash­tag #Best­Buds gen­er­at­ed about 15,000 tweets in 24 hours.

So far, com­menters on YouTube at least seem to con­nect with the con­tent, adding posts like, “Not a dog per­son at all.…This 2015 Super­bowl com­mer­cial by Bud­weis­er though, Lost Puppy…THIS is how to do a com­mer­cial with a pup­py GoDad­dy. This one hits even ME in the feels,” and “Oh bloomin’ heck!!! Eyes are sweat­ing like crazy now.”

Tes­sa Wegert, com­mu­ni­ca­tions direc­tor at dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing agency Enlight­en, notes this con­nec­tion Bud­weis­er has forged with con­sumers via its pup­py is some­thing GoDad­dy should have con­sid­ered.

“The over­whelm­ing­ly pos­i­tive response to the Bud­weis­er pup­py spot on which this ad was based should have been seen as a har­bin­ger for the con­sumer back­lash that GoDad­dy is fac­ing now,” Wegert said. “There’s a dif­fer­ence between a brand play­ing on heart­strings and a brand mock­ing the emo­tion­al sto­ry­telling strat­e­gy that’s become so pop­u­lar among Super Bowl adver­tis­ers and view­ers, both.”

Did GoDaddy Fumble Or Score?

Online rep­u­ta­tion man­age­ment guru Andy Beal said that no mat­ter what, GoDad­dy wins either way.

“When you walk such a fine line, you have to accept that you will often over­step the mark and cause an uproar. They have noth­ing to lose by pulling the ad,” Beal said. “Those that like their sen­sa­tion­al­ism will see noth­ing wrong with the ad, while those that oppose it will com­mend them for their deci­sion to pull it.”

How­ev­er, there is one small point where Boston-based Jar­boe dis­agrees slight­ly with his peers.

“If there is no such thing as bad press, then the New Eng­land Patri­ots have had a very good 10 days,” Jar­boe added, refer­ring to Deflate­Gate.

Con­sumer back­lash gets GoDad­dy lots of atten­tion, but is there real­ly no such thing as bad pub­lic­i­ty?