Here's a commercial that might stop your Super Bowl party in its tracks.
Go Daddy on Friday unveiled the second of its two 30-second commercials for Sunday's broadcast, this one featuring Bar Refaeli. And it proves to be quite the unusual advertising job indeed for the Israeli supermodel.
The woman who dated Leonardo DiCaprio for years is called on here to kiss—sloppily, in uncomfortable, silent close-up—the actor Jesse Heiman, who is not Leonardo DiCaprio.
The ad (posted below), by Deutsch in New York and director Mike Maguire of Biscuit Filmworks, will air during the first quarter of Sunday's broadcast on CBS.
It's a continuation of Go Daddy's fairly new "Smart meets sexy" campaign, which Deutsch introduced in ads last year. Here, Refaeli, 27, personifies the sexy side of Go Daddy, while Heiman, 34, playing a Go Daddy engineer, represents its smart side.
In an email, Go Daddy said Heiman "was a Go Daddy hosting customer long before he was cast to play Walter." The company added: "He had never been in a Super Bowl commercial … and never kissed a supermodel before."
The couple did 45 takes of the kiss, Go Daddy claimed, adding that Heiman afterward said he felt like he won the "championship of men."
Likewise, this is Refaeli's first Super Bowl commercial. She probably had never kissed a homely character actor before, either.
Go Daddy further claimed that two other versions of this ad were rejected by CBS for being too indecent, so perhaps this is the mild version.
Go Daddy's new positioning is designed to move it away from the sexy-first imagery of most of its marketing over the past decade and toward an equal focus on its back-end reliability.
Danica Patrick also makes an appearance in this spot—her record 12th altogether in Super Bowl ads, more than any other celebrity in history.
This is Go Daddy's ninth straight appearance in the big game. The company's other commercial, "YourBigIdea.CO," will air at the two-minute warning of the fourth quarter.