A ‘Grown Up’ GoDaddy Hires an Ad Agency

GoDaddy, a brand notorious for suggestive Super Bowl commercials with scantily clad women known as GoDaddy Girls, is hiring a professional advertising agency to create campaigns as the company seeks a more professional image.

GoDaddy, which registers Internet domain names and is a Web hosting provider, is to announce on Tuesday afternoon that it has hired Deutsch New York as its creative agency, effective immediately.

The first work for GoDaddy from Deutsch New York will be commercials that are to appear next month, during the NBC coverage of the 2012 Summer Olympics, as part of a campaign carrying the theme “Inside/Out.”

GoDaddy has been producing its own commercials and other ads for more than seven years, replete with broad humor, well-endowed women and double entendres. The approach has been called “GoDaddy-esque” by Bob Parsons, the founder and chief executive of the company, who has reveled in all the attention – as well as the considerable criticism for being sexist – that the campaigns have generated.

But in July, private equity powerhouses that included Kohlberg Kravis Roberts paid about $2.25 billion for a majority stake in GoDaddy and named Warren Adelman the chief executive; Mr. Parsons became executive chairman.

“We are synonymous with inexpensive domains and sexy girls,” Mr. Adelman told the magazine. “I think there is a different message we have to expose people to.”

Mr. Parsons, in a phone interview on Tuesday, said he was fine with GoDaddy’s marketing taking “a new direction.”