The debate on new TLDs is filtering out to non-domain media organs, which is where it belongs. Today I spotted a article in Ad Age, which gave me some hope that the story of new TLDs would finally find some traction among the people who can benefit most from it — marketers.
The article is not bad, but unfortunately the writer seems only to have spoken with confirmed TLD-deniers, where the well-rehearsed arguments were trotted out by Fairwinds and others.
I wrote a response, which Ad Age may or may not let into the comments, but which my brother thinks is pretty good:
If you talk with intellectual property lawyers, as your article does, you will hear a superb articulation of risks to the brands they represent. This is their job, and they do their job well. But your article largely ignores the tremendous marketing opportunities that new top-level domains (TLDs) offer, which far outweigh the risks. In this case, the risk lies in NOT moving forward.
Ad Age is filled with stories about how branding and trust increase online sales. This is precisely what new top-level domains bring to the table.
Examples:
- If the NFL owned .NFL, they would have online control of their franchise. Each team would have a verified name, for instance COWBOYS.NFL. Authenticated merchandise could be sold at GEAR.NFL, tickets at TICKETS.NFL. Compare this to today. Go ahead, type in cowboys.com or ravens.com and see where you go…. Is getting rid of this kind of confusion worth $185K?
- If Anheuser-Busch owned .BEER, how much is that worth in a Superbowl ad, which costs orders of magnitude more than the $185K it costs for new top-level domain? One ad, and it’s Bud = Beer. Game over.
- If BMW had standards for their pre-owned cars (which they do), then they could provide .BMW domain names for dealerships who met their qualifications. BMW = quality; .BMW = dealer you can trust.
- If you hired a celebrity endorser, for instance Shaquille O’Neal, for your new clothing line, how much better would it be to send people to THREADS.SHAQ than to yourcompanyname/shaqthreads? Think that’s not an issue? Now think about typing that in on a mobile device…
These new top-level domains are going to happen, because the demand has been simmering for over 10 years for non-Roman-character TLDs for most of the non-English-speaking world, so that people can use the Internet in their own language. Add to this vocal demands for non-brand-related TLDs such as .AFRICA, .EUS for the Basque Country, .NYC for New York City and so on. These are the real demands that are driving this process, and concerns about cost to brand owners, as real as they may be, are not going to stop it.
It’s true that the new TLDs will cause some headaches for brand owners, although there are workable proposals out there that will allow brand protection across all new TLDs for as little as $125 per brand. I worked with many Fortune 500 companies, managing their domain portfolios and helping them implement their intellectual property strategies online. I’m well aware of the issues.
But to concentrate on the risk and cost when the opportunities are so great strikes me as a great mistake. There is no reason for a company to spend money branding VeriSign (=.com) when they could be branding themselves, even as they claim a permanent part of the Internet at the very top level. Compared to the opportunity, the cost is truly trivial.
Antony Van Couvering
CEO, Minds + Machines
