Caught on Tape

Go Daddy CEO Kills an Elephant

People wearing company hats strip flesh off body.

Gruesome vacation video or misguided marketing campaign? Bob Parsons, CEO of the Web hosting company Go Daddy, filmed himself shooting an elephant he says was trampling a farmer’s crop. Then, what a caption describes as “hungry villagers,” wearing orange Go Daddy hats, strip flesh off the carcass to the tune of AC/DC’s “Hell’s Bells.” Captions in the video say the scene is a typical day on Parsons vacation in Zimbabwe, his second in two years. “The team was flagged down by a desperate farmer afraid of losing everything,” reads one caption. The video closes with the caption, “Team leaves to find another farmer in need of help,” as Parsons and his crew zoom off in their jeep. Animal rights group PETA condemned Parsons, awarding him the “first-ever scummiest CEO of the year award.” Parsons stood by his video: "You are completely misinformed. Elephants in Africa, especially in the Zimbabwe, Botswana, South Africa corridor exist in tremendous numbers. They are in absolutely no danger of becoming extinct. The bigger problem is that there is way too many of them."