One GoDaddy’s key business priorities over the past several years has been shifting the brand towards a much more inclusive organization. They had used edgy marketing tactics in the past to become the largest domain registrar in the world and roughly a billion-dollar company and distinguished themselves as a virtual household name in terms of brand recognition but remained misunderstood as an employer. Their top three strategic initiatives as they began this transformation in 2013 were to transform the brand, grow the business globally, and build a diverse and best in class product and engineering function. They had a negative employment brand with engineers, particularly from Silicon Valley and had to find ways to reestablish their employment brand messaging and advertising to be more about what they do and who they do it for.
One problem was that corporate branding efforts to attract people to their site did not reflect their internal culture – one that is inclusive, and a place where employees have a voice and can do the best work of their careers. In this session Lamar Daniels will share GoDaddy’s branding journey and how the company and employees both share the company’s culture for awareness, and to attract candidates and create a community including:
» The launch of GoDaddy Brave, an employee blog series on Medium where GoDaddy employees share stories of bravery in their personal and professional lives.
» Their first big marketing moves with a Super Bowl ad in which a real woman (not actor) quit her day job in order to start her own small business and follow her passion.
» A deep review of all brand messaging including gender neutral job descriptions and a huge effort to recruit more women in tech.
» Using social media to amplify their message in positive and different ways for targeted audiences LinkedIn, Glassdoor, Facebook, Medium, and the GoDaddy life page.