Adiós, Danica. Hola, Jean-Claude.
GoDaddy has been revamping its business for the past year, and now it’s revamping its image, too. The company’s newest ad, which debuts over the air during tonight’s National Football League game on NBC, features martial arts actor extraordinaire Jean-Claude an Damme as a baker’s inner spirit.
No bikinis, no sexual innuendo, no Bar Refaeli French kissing a nerd. Just a tank-top-clad Van Damme doing the splits, playing the pan pipes and uttering, “It’s go time.”
The New York Times has an article detailing the thinking behind the ad campaign, but it’s actually part of a broader business transition that involves some major product improvements. In the past year we’ve covered GoDaddy’s decision to kill its short-lived cloud computing service (probably wisely), only to see it subsequently buy a mobile-website-creation startup; hire former Yahoo executive Blake Irving as CEO; and launch a content-delivery network (CDN) targeting small businesses). Last month, it bought Locu, a startup that helps local businesses get found online.
A company representative assured me there are a lot more new products to come.
Google might not be running on GoDaddy anytime soon, but the mom-and-pop businesses that do are arguably getting a suite of products to help make them relevant in the digital era. And, who knows, maybe the spotlight will make Van Damme relevant again, too.
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