Go Daddy Actually Hires an Agency

Go figure.

Go Daddy, the Internet domain name player known for producing its own salacious-yet-traffic-generating spots for the Super Bowl, has hired an agency to produce a campaign that will break out of the scantily clad women genre and into what the company actually does.

The campaign, from the New York office of Deutsch, will break during the Summer Olympics on NBC. The tagline will be "Inside/Out," Go Daddy said in a statement this morning.

The brand's media spending totaled nearly $33 million last year, up slightly from about $29 million in 2010, according to Nielsen. Those figures don't include online outlays.

While unusual and unexpected, Go Daddy's hiring of an agency is not unprecedented. The company's first Super Bowl commercial [1], in 2005, was produced by The Ad Store in New York. But just as soon as the spot generated buzz and brand awareness, Go Daddy fired the agency [2], taking its business in-house instead.

In its statement, Go Daddy chief marketing officer Barb Rechterman described the hiring of Deutsch as an "important step in Go Daddy's brand evolution." Deutsch New York CEO Val DiFebo, in turn, said the agency's challenge is to tell the company's story "in a way that is still fun and edgy, but showcases more of Go Daddy's specific offerings."

So much for TV ads teasing us to watch uncensored footage of women online. We all have to grow up eventually.