Beyond the Go Daddy Girl: Customer-driven innovation in a connected world

GoDaddy.com scored a marketing windfall in 2005 when Fox Network decided midgame to pull the company’s racy commercial from the Super Bowl. The controversy propelled the Internet services company forward, but Go Daddy Group President and Chief Operating Officer Warren Adelman said Oct. 1 at Thunderbird that the firm’s continued prosperity has more to do with old-fashioned customer service than edgy advertising or anything else.

“Our key to success is listening to our customers every single day,” Adelman said. “We’re getting about one million phone calls per month from our customers, and we’re distilling that information into what our product roadmap looks like, how we support new customers, and where we need to grow internationally.”

Adelman said the Super Bowl ad generated about $13 million in free advertising and created a surge in business. “The challenge has been preserving this culture of customer service as the company grows,” he told an audience of about 100 Thunderbird faculty, staff and students.

Overall, Adelman said friendly customer service fits into a four-pronged strategy for Go Daddy that also includes value pricing, product diversification and aggressive marketing.

Customer service
When Adelman talks about customer service, he starts by talking about happy employees. “A happy employee relates directly to a happy customer,” he said.

Go Daddy has a spinning wheel for employee prizes, a “money machine,” and other creative tools for recognizing employees at company headquarters in Scottsdale, Ariz.

One time, when an angry customer called to complain about a Go Daddy call center worker, Adelman went back and listened to a recording of the original conversation. He decided that his employee had displayed remarkable patience with the woman and rewarded his employee with a cash prize.

“It’s really about taking care of our customers and taking care of the people that make up Go Daddy,” he said.

Value pricing
Adelman said another thing that keeps customers happy is value pricing. When Go Daddy started registering Internet domain names in 2000, many competitors charged $30 or more for the service.

Go Daddy decided to set the bar at $7.95, a price that has changed little over the years. So far, more than 7 million customers have jumped at the price, and Go Daddy adds about one new domain name per second.

Product diversification
One thing that has changed is the range of products and services that Go Daddy offers. Adelman said the strategy is to get people in the door with affordable domain name registration and Web hosting, and then offer related services, such as SSL certificates for Web site security.

“It’s like selling hotdogs at the ballpark,” Adelman said. “Once people come to the game, you want to keep them there to buy their food.”

Aggressive marketing
The final component of the strategy is aggressive marketing. Go Daddy raised eyebrows in 2005 when the little-known company paid $5 million for the right to air two commercials during the Super Bowl that featured the New England Patriots and Philadelphia Eagles.

“We knew we wanted to be edgy in the 30 seconds we had to get people to our Web site,” Adelman said. “The luck side of it came afterward, and that’s when Fox decided to pull the ad.”

The commercial, which spoofed the infamous “wardrobe malfunction” during the Super Bowl halftime show one year earlier, portrayed Go Daddy Girl Candice Michelle testifying before Congress about television censorship.

Adelman said he watched the game with co-workers at company offices in Scottsdale. The first 30-second spot aired without incident, but the second spot during the fourth quarter never came.

Fox executives decided the spot was too risqué and aired a promotional ad for “The Simpsons” instead.

Adelman said the Go Daddy executives in the room looked at each other and smiled when they realized what had happened. Media outlets picked up the incident as a news story, and the commercial became the most successful spot in Super Bowl history.

Michelle, who visited Thunderbird with Adelman to pass out Go Daddy shirts, said the publicity helped draw attention to a good company.

“I think I have really helped bring awareness to the company,” she said. “They’re an amazing company, but it doesn’t matter if nobody knows about them.”

[This article has been reproduced with permission from Knowledge Network, the online thought leadership platform for Thunderbird School of Global Management https://thunderbird.asu.edu/knowledge-network/]