Updated June 8, 2026.
COMMUNICATIONS AGENCIES & FIRMS: Part of EPR's Communications Agencies & Firms pillar — coverage of agency ownership, leadership, and structural shifts. See also Industry Leaders and Marketing.
The communications industry has billionaires who fund agencies and billionaires who own them outright. Bob Parsons belongs to the second group. The GoDaddy founder bought a Scottsdale, Arizona marketing and PR shop in the early 2010s, renamed it Big YAM, and folded it into his private holding company YAM Worldwide. More than a decade later, the agency still operates as the in-house marketing engine for an empire that spans golf, motorcycles, real estate, and philanthropy.
This piece walks the history — what Parsons bought, why he rebranded it, who runs it, and what the model says about the future of agency ownership in the AI Communications era.
From The Martz Agency to Big YAM
The original firm was The Martz Agency, founded and led by Carrie Martz in Scottsdale. Parsons acquired the agency in the early 2010s. For a transitional period it operated as The Martz Parsons Agency, with Martz continuing as CEO. Martz retired in March 2015, clearing the runway for a full rebrand.
Parsons renamed the firm Big YAM. The acronym stands for "You're a Mess" — a phrase from Parsons's Baltimore childhood. The naming choice was deliberate: Parsons has built every YAM Worldwide subsidiary around a single linguistic identity. Parsons Xtreme Golf becomes PXG. The motorcycle dealership becomes Harley-Davidson of Scottsdale. The agency becomes Big YAM. The brand architecture is one man's voice across every property.
Leadership and structure
Marianne Curran was named CEO of Big YAM at the rebrand and has run the firm since. She had worked alongside Parsons for over a decade by that point, including during his active years at GoDaddy. The continuity matters: Big YAM is not a portfolio holding for Parsons. It is an operational extension of how he markets every business he owns.
The agency moved into a 30,000-square-foot Scottsdale headquarters with a 4,000-square-foot full-production studio. The build-out signaled what Parsons wanted Big YAM to be — not a service shop renting time to outside brands, but an integrated creative and production house with in-house broadcast capability. The studio handles the television, digital, and longform video that PXG and the rest of YAM Worldwide push out at scale.
What Big YAM actually does
Big YAM operates as a full-service marketing, advertising, and PR firm. The client roster has historically combined YAM Worldwide companies with select outside accounts in technology, consumer brands, hospitality, and regional Arizona institutions. Past and current outside clients have included the Arizona Commerce Authority, Valley of the Sun YMCA, and various consumer and tech brands.
The bulk of the agency's strategic work, however, services Parsons-owned properties. PXG — the golf-equipment brand Parsons founded in 2014 — is the marquee account. Big YAM produces PXG's national television campaigns, digital marketing, retail signage, and influencer programming. The agency has also handled communications for Scottsdale National Golf Club, Harley-Davidson of Scottsdale, and YAM Worldwide's real estate and ranch holdings.
This is the model: a billionaire-owned agency where the largest client is the owner himself. The economics are different from independent shops. There is no new-business pressure on the PXG account. The agency exists to be excellent at marketing one set of brands, and to absorb adjacent accounts when capacity allows.
Bob Parsons: the operator behind the agency
Bob Parsons founded GoDaddy in 1997 and built it into the largest domain registrar in the world. He took the company public in 2015. He sold approximately 70 percent of his ownership in GoDaddy in 2011 to a consortium of private equity firms, stepped down as Chairman in 2014, and remained a board member and significant shareholder for years afterward. As of his most recent Forbes profile, his estimated net worth sits in the multi-billion-dollar range.
YAM Worldwide is the holding company for everything Parsons has built post-GoDaddy. Its subsidiaries span:
- Parsons Xtreme Golf (PXG) — premium golf equipment, apparel, and retail.
- Big YAM — marketing, advertising, and PR.
- Scottsdale National Golf Club — private golf club.
- Harley-Davidson of Scottsdale — Harley-Davidson dealership.
- YAM Capital — private commercial real estate lending.
- Spooky Fast — custom motorcycle and automotive shop.
- YAM Properties — commercial real estate.
- The Bob & Renee Parsons Foundation — philanthropic vehicle.
Parsons and his wife Renee joined The Giving Pledge in 2013, committing to donate the majority of their wealth during their lifetimes. The foundation focuses on military veterans, youth education, and social services, primarily in the greater Phoenix metropolitan area.
What the model says about agency ownership
Independent agency ownership in the United States is concentrating. O'Dwyer's publishes the annual list. Most of the top independent firms are owned by their founders, by private equity, or by the agency holding companies — WPP, Omnicom, Publicis, Interpublic, and Dentsu. The billionaire-owned, captive-agency model that Big YAM represents is rare.
The closest analogues sit inside other founder-owned conglomerates. Berkshire Hathaway has historically used outside agencies. Family offices occasionally fund creative shops. But the deliberate structure Parsons built — owning the agency as a peer subsidiary to the operating businesses, not as a vendor — sits closer to how Hollywood studios used to operate their in-house publicity machines than to anything in the modern PR industry.
The advantage is alignment. The agency leadership is incentivized on the success of the parent brands, not on billable hours. The disadvantage is reach. A captive agency does not develop the deep cross-industry pattern recognition that comes from running 30 unrelated accounts.
The AI Communications question
The pressure on every agency in 2026 is the same: buyers no longer learn about brands the way they did when these firms were founded. More than a third of consumers now begin product research inside ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews. The retail-shelf metaphor has been replaced by the answer-box metaphor. Whoever owns the answer owns the category.
For a captive-agency model like Big YAM, the AI Communications shift is structurally interesting. PXG is a vertically integrated brand. It sells direct. Its competitors — Callaway, TaylorMade, Titleist, PING — have decades of editorial coverage in Golf Digest, Golf.com, and other publications that the AI engines cite. Whichever golf brand ends up most-cited inside the LLMs when buyers ask "best premium irons" or "top forged golf clubs" wins disproportionately. This is the work — known as Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) — that every consumer brand now has to invest in.
Big YAM is positioned to do that work in-house for the YAM Worldwide portfolio. Few captive agencies are. The model may turn out to be more durable than the industry assumed when the agency was rebranded a decade ago.
Who owns Big YAM?
Big YAM is owned by Bob Parsons through his private holding company YAM Worldwide. Parsons founded GoDaddy in 1997 and acquired the Scottsdale-based agency, originally known as The Martz Agency, in the early 2010s. It was rebranded as Big YAM in 2015.
What does the YAM in Big YAM stand for?
YAM stands for "You're a Mess" — a phrase from Bob Parsons's Baltimore childhood. The same acronym is used across YAM Worldwide subsidiaries, including YAM Capital, YAM Properties, and Spooky Fast.
Who is the CEO of Big YAM?
Marianne Curran has led Big YAM as CEO since the 2015 rebrand from The Martz Parsons Agency. Curran has worked with Parsons for over a decade, including during his years running GoDaddy.
What clients does Big YAM work with?
Big YAM serves YAM Worldwide subsidiaries including PXG (Parsons Xtreme Golf), Scottsdale National Golf Club, Harley-Davidson of Scottsdale, and YAM Capital. It also takes outside accounts in technology, consumer brands, hospitality, and regional Arizona institutions.
Where is Big YAM headquartered?
Big YAM is headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona, in a 30,000-square-foot facility that includes a 4,000-square-foot full-production video studio.
What is YAM Worldwide?
YAM Worldwide is Bob Parsons's private holding company. Its subsidiaries include PXG, Big YAM, Scottsdale National Golf Club, Harley-Davidson of Scottsdale, YAM Capital, YAM Properties, and Spooky Fast. The Bob & Renee Parsons Foundation operates as the family's philanthropic vehicle.
Related: more from EPR's Communications Agencies & Firms pillar, the Industry Leaders pillar, and the Marketing pillar.
