The Problem: Mid-March 2020 it was apparent that COVID was something the world had never seen before and the main tool we had at our disposal was to stay at home. What did that mean for GoDaddy’s base of everyday entrepreneurs? These little guys don’t have stockpiles of cash or alternate revenue streams and we knew they would be hit very hard.
We knew, if we were to call ourselves their champion, we had to show up.
The Solution: And we did, we launched a movement of anything and everything we could to help. Within 10 days we launched films (including global adapts) honoring their incredible resilience and saying we would stand by them with free products, tools, and resources. This drove to a landing page that was bigger than our company. It was resources, community, advice, forums, offers, partnerships, and more.
Phase 1 – Creating A Movement #openwestand
Phase 2 – A dose of encouragement to start your thing – They Did It, So Can You
The Problem: How do we, and should we, encourage people to start their thing with us during an economic crisis?
The Solution: Unfortunately, as well as by choice, we are seeing people forced to start their own things as their jobs are no longer there. While we are not a brand that talks strongly on negative aspects of life, this proves we should be the voice of encouragement that it is still possible.
We looked to history for this encouragement and realized many companies were started in recessions proving it’s not about the time ideas were started in, but the people who start them.
The openwestand.org site featured:
– Articles, resources, guidance – in real-time we were gathering anything that could help our customers remain open.
– A community section so everyday entrepreneurs could chat and figure out how others were finding ways to remain open.
– 120+ offers from ourselves and partners – we knew this was bigger than us so we joined together with 70+ other companies.
Social
The Pledge
We publicly declared that every time we opened our wallets we would consider if we could be shopping at an independent versus a big guy. We published our pledge in Inc Magazine – the Founders Saving Main St issue, on our social channels and on openwestand.org and godaddy.com
The Pledge: Social Media Version
Always On Content Updates
We stayed on top of updates – The Cares Act, Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), applying for funding and grants… as we heard updates, we let people know with 62 videos and counting.
Shoppable ads
Using our media dollars to literally provide clicks to our customers’ websites and increase our brand love resulted in a 3.8% increase in ad recall and a (reliable) 99% chance they contributed to brand lift. Cost per brand life $0.11.
We joined the GoFundMe.org Small Business Relief Fund
We partnered with SuperFly to host SmallBizLive
- A 6-hour event that was seen by over 10M users and raised $1M.
- Overall 80M impressions for the SmallBizLive program + 11M additional impressions from the Bustle Digital Group.
- 102 $5000 grants were distributed to entrepreneurs of color and women with the remaining funds going toward long-term small business support programs.
- According to a Neilson study, we had a 22.4% lift to our brand.
We were in The New York Times
How our products can help – Come Be Part Of It
The Problem: Stay-at-home orders made it tough for small businesses to stay in business. How do we get them to understand that our products can genuinely help?
The Solution: Even though we, their customers, were stuck indoors – life was still being lived – so Come Be Part Of It. We all still wanted happy hours, little treats, to learn new skills, to stay fit. We still needed and wanted the things businesses provide. We just have to find them online. And boy, were we shopping online! YoY online sales growth was up 68% in mid-April. This film is a little advice to small businesses to pivot online and to use all the tools GoDaddy provides so they can still be part of our lives. Picked up by the AUS and CA markets.
All those featured are genuine GoDaddy businesses that are pivoting and finding new ways to do things. I am humbled by all their ingenuity and nimbleness but possibly the highlight story for me, which also spread over PR, was from Chef Zach. Zach lost his employment due to the pandemic but went online with GoDaddy and cooked with you over Facetime with what you had in your pantry.
Phase 3 – The Re-Open
The Problem: We started this movement. When you start a movement you can’t just be there at the beginning, you have to keep showing up.
The Solution: A continued message of support for the next phase of C-19, as states open back up. “As we re-open our doors, what kind of world do we want to walk out into? One that is as interesting and individual as the people in it.”
As every state will hit this moment at different times, this can be mixed in the media buy with the previous messages to run what is the most appropriate to them.
In a further PR initiative we also shared concrete, ownable data of how small businesses are helping the economy bounce back.
Results
We rode the emotional wave very well. Starting out with a message of support, then giving some reassurance and encouragement that things can still be started, then as we re-opened a rallying cry of what we want this world to be when we walk out into it.
This was a pivotal moment of solidifying GoDaddy’s new, evolved brand to the world – not just the US. The hero Open We Stand film was the most performant ad since the rebrand – proving that consumers want brands to stand for their values.
- Brand Search Query Volume up by 12%, crushing our goal of +3%
- 4.5 billion impressions! Over half of those impressions are from paid advertising (with an average CPM of nearly half our target), 24% are from brand social and 17% are from PR.
- Hitting a 12 month high in brand awareness.
- The campaign drove our YouTube subscribers over 117K
- And our Instagram followers over 61K.
- 601 LinkedIn Community members.
- 59M YouTube views on our 60s spot.
- We had our strongest Q2 ever.
- With this campaign, the US exceeded ‘For People Like Me’ scores in 2020 with Q4 setting a record high of 32.7%