*** Here Is A List Of Some Of The Best Domain Name Resources Available ***PALM BEACH, FL – Although I am not a huge fan of new gTLDs or even “Dot Brands”, today I watched a video by the Chief Marketing Officer of Afilias domain registry, Roland LaPlante, who explained ‘in detail’ the value of owning your own “dot BRAND.”
LaPlante discusses the benefits in marketing, user security and what is likely one of the most desirable aspects achieved for the owning brand; “full control” of their own corporate space. I believe it is the best explanation of what a big brand has to actually gain by going through this entire effort and expense of applying for its own “Dot Whatever” and I can see why some large corporate entities would figure it’s a worthwhile effort exploring.
Control is a very powerful thing, and people, by nature, want to control their destiny, the perception of their brand, and their own environment, as much as possible, especially a corporate environment. Heck, some people are just “control freaks”; many of them – executives.
The first one [benefit] is complete control over the space; this means control over every single entity that owns a site in that space so, BNP Paribas for example, can, it will, only allow sites that are authorized by BNP Paribas; nobody else can get in to the top level domain because BNP Paribas can control 100% of who is allowed to have a site there. The second piece is what they can do with that, the content it’s on every site, so if BNP Paribas grants 300 sites and two of them have content that’s against company policy or for whatever reason is objectionable to BNP Paribas, BNP Paribas can call Ophelia’s because we’re doing there technical work, tell us to take it down and we instantaneously take it off the internet. There’s that much control when you own the entire top level domain, so control is an important aspect and this and this will enable the dot brand owners to give their customers a place on the internet that is safe and secure so that internet visitors, their customers, can have more confidence in the brand in the online world as much confidence in the online world as they do in the real world, so control is a really important benefit.
The second piece is security everybody is concerned about security on the internet today and there’s just a blizzard of criminal activity going, on but with your own dot brand, because you’re controlling who has one and you’re controlling what they can do on it, you can create a safe secure environment for your customers to come and visit you and do business with you, and that’s, and that’s an important benefit that every dot brand will have.
The third benefit has to do with future proofing; many dot brand owners and folks who are contemplating getting a dot brand are manufacturing companies and they’re linking up all their products via light bulbs or security cameras or automobiles or parts for airplanes or whatever, are all being linked to be able to communicate back with the mothership; things should be upgraded as a host of benefits to this but it requires an enormous amount of address space and if you have a dot brand, you essentially own an unlimited amount of address space that’s dedicated entirely to you and is completely in your control and therefore very secure, so if you’re if you see the Internet of Things as important to the future of your company, a dot brand is really one of the things that helps that to be secure in safe and of course the last thing is branding having your brand at the end of an address on every email address that anyone in your company sends out to anybody any time you show you a company address on the internet, it’s the brand and not a random term like net or com there’s tremendous branding benefits that will that will help secure your brand on the internet and help it be even more memorable than it is today.
In the nine-minute video LaPlante also puts into prospective the three different types of people, companies or groups who have already started securing their own “dot brands”, which in short are (1), is doing nothing with them, the second (2), are just starting to plan to use them, and the third, which he calls, the “All In” group, (3) have already abandoned their previous URLs for the new corporate branded ones.
While many companies have embraced the new gTLD program for branded URL’s (even if just defensively), others such as Mc Donald’s (.McDonalds) [ .MCD letter followed], Pampered Chef (.PamperedChef) and Chrysler (.chrysler) [.dodge and .mopar letters followed] are just a few of many who have decided to pull out.
A full running list of all termination letters to ICANN, The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, for dot banded URLs can be found listed here: https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/gtld-registry-agreement-termination-2015-10-09-en
About The Author: John Colascione is Chief Executive Officer of SEARCHEN NETWORKS®. He specializes in Website Monetization, is a Google AdWords Certified Professional, authored a how-to book called ”Mastering Your Website‘, and is a key player in several online businesses.
Marketing nonsense in every point.
The .brand salesmen will have a very hard job selling a second round. Business knows it is a dud.