Case study 02 · GoDaddy Australia · 2021–23

Dream It. Build It.

Week one at GoDaddy. The brief: we're the official website builder of the Australian Olympic Team, the campaign doesn't exist yet, and you have six weeks.

+25% brand growth YoY+7% business growth YoYAOC Inspiration Award

Position

Senior Marketing Manager (AU) May 2021 – Jan 2023PromotedSenior Manager, Planning, Strategy & Integrated Marketing: AU · CA · UK Jan – Sep 2023

Scope

Integrated campaignsPRSocial & content strategyPartnerships & sponsorshipCreative productionMulti-market planningAgency & budget management

The challenge

GoDaddy was known in Australia as a domains business, if it was known at all. The job: reposition it as the website builder for online entrepreneurs, with a lean team of three reporting to the country Managing Director, and a sponsorship that had to be live, TVC shoot included, six weeks after I started.

The unlock was an audience insight. Our buyers were aspiring business owners, and Olympians are exactly that. Melissa Wu, Olympian & Entrepreneur, fronted the campaign in her dual role: elite diver and three-time business founder. The promise, anyone can dream it and build it, no tech skills required. Then COVID reshaped the Games, and the campaign had to reshape with it.

Melissa Wu diving, GoDaddy Olympic campaign

Melissa Wu, Olympian & Entrepreneur: the face of the campaign in both her lives.

The role

Campaign leadership

Led the integrated campaign from brief to delivery in six weeks, TVC shoot included: creative territory, channel planning, partnership positioning and production across TV, out-of-home, print, digital, social and PR.

The quarantine pivot

When athletes went into mandatory quarantine, we built the Dream It. Build It. program in under two weeks: webinars, free products and a keynote, teaching Olympians to launch businesses from their hotel rooms. 75% of participating athletes launched live websites.

Measurement and optimisation

Every objective carried a target, measured phase by phase: a four-phase PR program, in-flight reallocation, then a data-led campaign extension re-targeted by geography and age toward the audiences most likely to convert.

The work

We followed Melissa Wu, Olympian & Entrepreneur, across two parallel lives: the athlete preparing for her fourth Games, and the founder building Havok Athletic from scratch. The same discipline, the same self-belief, the same willingness to start with nothing. Dream it. Build it.

The part that meant most had nothing to do with the media plan. The athlete business program kept producing stories long after the closing ceremony, with multiple Olympians going on to launch real businesses, and we kept telling those stories.