20,433 Elephant Lovers Say Goodbye to GoDaddy
By David Perry
It was just a couple weeks ago that the CEO of GoDaddy released a video of himself hunting down helpless elephants and taking some nasty footage the whole way through. Standing in front of his killed elephant like a fool, did Bob Parsons, CEO of GoDaddy, even think about the consequences of his actions and footage which would soon spawn across millions of web sites and domain owners? … or was Bob Parson simply looking for the attention he tries to get every year with his Superbowl commercials that always try to push the envelope? Either way, he did get the attention, but he also helped GoDaddy lose a decent amount of customers and increase the competition at the same time.
Long story short… once the video and story was released on GoDaddy’s elephant video, the drama and boycott started. NameCheap was smart enough to think of a way to both attack GoDaddy, take their customers and also help donate to saving the elephants. NameCheap created a coupon code that would allow you to transfer domains away from GoDaddy for a lower price, and a portion would also go to charity.
I’ve been very curious how successful this campaign was, and some numbers were actually released today.
“Domain registrar Namecheap said thousands of outraged customers transferred 20,433 Web domains to their service in the fallout over a graphic hunting video showing GoDaddy chief Bob Parsons shooting an elephant.
A spokesperson for the small L.A.-based registrar said that a “majority” of the transfers were from GoDaddy, and that a special “Save the Elephants” deal rolled out after the scandal reaped $80,000 in revenue.”
It’s quite amazing to see that over 20,000 domains were transferred away from GoDaddy to NameCheap. You can read the full story and watch the original elephant hunting video here.
Although the “Save the Elephants” campaign is now over, you can still save money by using coupon code “SWITCH2NC“, which will take off $1 per domain transfer.
