2013 Daytona 500 pole sitter Danica Patrick seemed somewhat surprised, but admitted that she was rather disappointed that her sponsor GoDaddy’s Super Bowl ad was pulled just days before Super Bowl XLIX.
Patrick who’s appeared in more Super Bowl commercials than any other celebrity was set to appear in an ad in which Buddy, a lost golden retriever was trying to find his way home. In the ad, Patrick picked up the dog, boxed it up and later sold him on the Internet.
The ad was pulled after animal rights activists fired back with a petition of more than 40,000 signatures demanding it to be pulled.
“I was definitely disappointed that I wasn’t in the Super Bowl for a commercial, but I was in a Super Bowl commercial, it just didn’t run,” Patrick said Thursday morning at NASCAR Media Day.
GoDaddy responded quickly to the backlash and pulled it from airing within hours of harsh criticism surfacing on their social media platforms.
“GoDaddy had every intention to run that commercial, and I feel like I heard from a lot of people that it was like choreographed and it was planned and stuff,” Patrick added. “I think that’s so funny. We thought it was a really funny, absolutely left sided joke, but it really was not intentional.”
Still, Patrick on the heels of entering her fourth Daytona 500 on February 22 says she wasn’t actually surprised when the decision came down for the ad not to air.
“I don’t think anything in this culture surprises me anymore, Patrick said. “I mean, people have opinions about everything, especially when you get into that world of animal rights or tree rights or whatever rights. They all have an opinion.”
Despite the ad debacle, Patrick said she credited GoDaddy CEO Blake Irving with his handling of what quickly became a controversial firestorm.
“I think Blake handled it as great as he could have,” she said. “I think he made the most of the moment and showed the character of GoDaddy and himself and said we are not here to rock the boat, we’re not here to make people angry and we’ll pull the commercial and we’ll run something else. We were here to be funny and enough people didn’t think it was funny.
“I feel like they still got their bang for their buck out of a Super Bowl commercial.”
Patrick noted that she herself is a dog lover who often shares behind the scene moments with her miniature Siberian Husky didn’t have a problem with the message GoDaddy produced.
“I looked far to find my dog online. Sorry, I did. I love my dog and take great care of her. I was up at 1:45 in the morning (Thursday) taking her out last night in the dark because she had to go out. She found a good home. I mean, how bad can it really be?”
Follow Chris Knight on Twitter @Knighter01.
