• by Aaron Baar , January 30, 2014

There are plenty of places to find to host a business or personal Web site. Squarespace, one of many Web publishing platforms, is looking to take advantage of the Super Bowl’s large audience to gain a little more share of mind in the increasingly crowded Web-hosting space. 

“Our company has always relied on marketing in some form to foster growth,” says company CEO Anthony Casalena. Much of that marketing, however, has been mostly digital. “We started to realize TV can be a way to get Squarespace out there. Lots of individuals and small businesses create Web sites. And now we’ve got this chance to put Squarespace out there for a larger audience.”

In a 30-second television spot scheduled to run nationally during the Super Bowl, the company asserts that the Web is what you make of it. Personifying all that people have come to live with (but not necessarily like) on the Internet, the spot shows a man trying to navigate a cast of characters that includes pitches for lower home mortgage rates, fitness products, virus scares, robotic purchase recommendations and pouty-lipped women. “A better web starts with your Web site,” concludes a voice over before issuing the tagline, “A better web awaits.”

“It’s a playful poke at some of the crazy stuff one encounters on the Internet,” Casalena tells Marketing Daily. “It draws a line in the sand to say the Web is what you make of it.”

Although not a massive marketer like Anheuser-Busch or Pepsi with the ability to purchase a number of pods during the Super Bowl, Casalena says having a presence on the high-profile event is worth the expense. “When you get to a certain level of growth, we lose sales not because they’re going to competitors -- we’re losing them because they don’t know about Squarespace,” he says. “People don’t create Web sites that often. We want to be sure that when they do, we’re top of mind.”

After the Super Bowl, the campaign will be expanded to include more television programming, digital, social and out-of-home formats.