Melissa Wu: three-time Olympian, founder of Havok Athletic, campaign hero.
Case study 02 · GoDaddy Australia · 2021–23
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.
GoDaddy was known in Australia as a domains business, if it was known at all. The campaign's job was to change that perception and position GoDaddy as the go-to website builder for online entrepreneurs, with a team of three and a media budget that needed to work hard.
The Olympic sponsorship was the lever, if we could unlock it with an idea that did more than badge-slap a logo on a jersey. The territory we landed on was the parallel between elite athletic discipline and the grit of building something from nothing.
Melissa Wu: three-time Olympian, founder of Havok Athletic, campaign hero.
Key strategic support to the campaign lead: creative territory, channel planning and the partnership positioning that shaped Dream It. Build It.
Hands-on activation with the AOC and talent, following Melissa Wu across diving pools, training venues and business settings to tell both stories at once.
Tokyo ran during COVID, with athletes quarantining alone. We built a free program, at zero cost, teaching Olympians to launch their own online business in that time. Several did.
We followed Melissa Wu 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.
“The GoDaddy campaign stood out in how it highlighted that there is more to Olympians than just their sport.” · Steve Hooker, AOC judging panel