If you’re rethinking your .brand top level domain strategy, here are some things to think about.
A relatively small number of .brand new TLD applicants have abandoned the process so far. Some of them are big, such as GM, which withdrew all of its applications. Others have only dropped one or two of their applications.
As a .brand applicant yourself, you may be reconsidering your new TLD plans. If you withdraw your application before it passes initial evaluation, you’ll get most of your application fee back. So time is of the essence.
What should you do? Who can you turn to for guidance?
First things first: the consultant that has helped you with your application is obviously biased. Don’t listen to them.
.Brand might be a great thing for your company. Or it might not. Since it depends on your specific situation, let me give a handful of reasons you might want to pull the plug.
1. You’re having trouble articulating how you’ll actually use the domain name.
What will you actually do with your .brand?
As your .brand gets closer to reality, your executives are probably asking you for an implementation plan. An implementation plan is a lot harder to deliver than some pie-in-the-sky “this will change the internet!” talk.
Surely you’re not going to just flip the switch from your .com to your .brand.
So what exactly will you do? Start running some promotions on it? Migrate your entire company’s email to something.brand?
The details get rather hairy. Do you plan to alias every second level .brand domain to an equivalent third level domain on your existing .com? How will you education everyone that your email addresses are now [email protected]? Will you have to forward [email protected] for a few years?
Maybe you have a plan, and that’s great. But I suspect the implementation is a lot more work than you originally imagined.
2. They cost a lot – for your particular department.
It’s true that the $185,000 application fee and associated costs are peanuts to a big company.
But I’ve worked at a big company (in an intellectual property department, no less) and I understand how this works.
Your company earns billions, but your department gets squeezed.
If the new TLD application costs come out of marketing’s top line budget, that’s no big deal.
If it’s being allocated to some small IT department, or even the IP department, it may be a burden. It may be an employee or two you can’t hire.
3. If .brand TLDs are successful, you know there will be another round.
No one knows if .brand TLDs will be successful. If they truly give companies a competitive advantage, you can rest assured that ICANN will hold a second round. It will also be a lot cheaper, as ICANN has been embarrassed by how much money it brought in compared to how much the new TLD program cost.
4. Some of the big companies you assumed would apply didn’t.
You probably told your bosses that all of the big, popular internet companies would apply for new TLDs. Yet two of the biggest, Twitter and Facebook, didn’t.
Others that got just one or two domains, such as Apple, likely did it for defensive purposes.
So that “everyone else is doing it” argument is coming back to haunt you.
5. The headaches never end.
How much more will ICANN ask of you in order to get your TLD delegated? Have you found yourself surprisingly caught up in GAC advice? Is this process taking more time and costing more money than you expected? Are you having to disclose more confidential information than you thought would be required?
6. You didn’t really have to worry about defensive registrations after all.
Thanks in part to fear mongering by the Association of National Advertisers, you may have been worried that some cybersquatter would spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to snag your well-protected brand as a top level domains.
While it was a crazy argument to begin with, now that you’ve seen the list of applied-for top level domains, it’s clear this wasn’t something for you to worry about.
7. The ICANN process was not designed for .brands.
There are a lot of rules in the applicant guidebook that had to be shoe-horned for .brand applications. .Brands were an afterthought. As I mentioned previously, if .brand TLDs are successful then we’ll have another round. You can bet it will be redesigned to be more conducive to .brand applications.
Aron says
Excellent thoughts. It’s great to have this list to reference for when people ask if a .BRAND is a good idea. Yes and no. This is a great reference that points toward “really think about it before jumping in.”
Peter LaMantia says
You are missing it guys.
The innovation potential for brands is massive with new capabilities brands have never had before. Those that give up will be making a big mistake and losing a jump on what is likely to be one of the biggest shifts in online engagement since the advent of social or mobile and broadband before that.
Digital thinkers have simply not had time to get their heads into it and think about what it means to own a registry. I have worked in the web service and domain space for years. Owning a registry creates opportunities that can revolutionize business models. The winners will be the innovators. I would not want to be a decision maker who decides to abandon their .brand now because it’s hard to understand what it means and the potential.
Andrew Allemann says
@ Peter LaMantia – give me an example.
Peter LaMantia says
A decade from now, it will be normal to visit a brand at http://www.home.brand , to consume services at http://www.service.brand, to interact with brand partners at http://www.channel.brand, respond to campaigns at http://www.promotion.brand and for brands and customers who seek closer relationships, adopt a http://www.customer.brand strategy.
This is not to say brands make a wholesale switch. Millions of dollars have been invested in .com properties, related SEO value, building new acquisition run rates and integrated into operations. No brand should simply cut over. Any .brand strategy and execution plan will require testing in a measure, analyze and adjust cycle while building value in the greater .brand network of properties.
Glad to discuss further Andrew, if you want to reach out.
Andrew Allemann says
@ Peter LaMantia –
It is indeed possible that over time people will switch from brand.com/customer and brand.com/service to a separate, distinct second level domain name for each one. That will happen if there is some clear benefit to doing so.
The problem for current applicants for .brand TLDs, as I see it, is that no one has been able to articulate to them why this new naming structure is better than the current one. That’s a challenge to the person inside a Fortune 500 that’s spearheading their new TLD efforts.
Peter LaMantia says
Andrew,
I agree and it isn’t simple. I don’t think they have had the cycles nor advise to think and plan to really digest the potential along with the practical “how to”.
The simplest one is campaign.brand.
What is better from direct response or brand attribute messaging perspective? 3 examples:
nike.com/justdoit or justdoit.nike
gucci.com/handbag or handbag.gucci
guccitimeless.com or timeless.gucci
Clean. Simple. Branded.
One I remember. One I do not. “keymessage.brand”
My favorite for immediate testing and ROI is channel.brand. ie: agent.statefarm, or dealer.telco
My favorites for innovation are customer.brand and service.brand
For long-term pain relief: Defensive costs and complexities are about to sore. Painful. The only viable long-term solution to reduce cost and infringements is an authentic.brand strategy.
Over and Out.
Kassey says
I’m with Peter on the long-term benefits of owning your own extension. The best thing I can think of about using .brand is that, you can tell consumers to ‘type’ anything in front of .brand for whatever they want to search for, e.g. if I’m looking for nike baby shoes, I just type ‘babyshoes.nike’, which will redirect to the the appropriate 2nd level domain. So now .brand becomes its own search engine. .nike is the only name that I need to remember when it comes to all things about .nike, for example.
Andrew Allemann says
@ Kassey –
A number of people have suggested this type of second level search.
It’s something that could be done already at the third level — babyshoes.nike.com.
In fact, it’s more feasible to do it as the third level than at the second level under the new TLD rules, which is part of the reason brands might want to hold off. First, you can’t wildcard the second level. Second, each second level domain counts as a domain name registration. So in order to make the second level a search, you’d have to “register” every conceivable second level domain that could be searched for. You have to pay ICANN for each second level registration as well.
In the future, will ICANN change the rules? If there’s demand for it, it’s possible. Companies will need to master the technology of splitting long strings into words (we see how well this works now when looking at how Domaintools splits domains into words) and see a demand for it amongst consumers. Then they can ask ICANN for it.
Which gets you back to the question: should you apply for your .brand now or wait until later when a lot of this is worked out?
If .brand TLDs end up being a game changer, ICANN will hold another round and change the rules to make it more conducive to .brand.
Phil says
Subdomains can already be used for branding. justdoit.nike.com is cleaner than nike.com/justdoit, but justdoit.nike is even better.
People are in the habit of putting .com at the end, but this may change over time.
Kassey says
Andrew,
—
you’d have to “register” every conceivable second level domain that could be searched for. You have to pay ICANN for each second level registration as well.
—
Does ICANN require .brand registry to pay for every 2nd level registration? I thought .brand being a closed TLD gives the owner complete freedom to do whatever they want with the 2nd level domains. But it seems from your info that this is not true. Then, this rule has to be changed, eventually. .brand owners need the freedom so that they can be creative in its usage. Just my 2c.
Andrew Allemann says
@ Kassey – correct, there’s a per domain fee for each “transaction” over 50,000
https://domainnamewire.com/2012/07/24/just-how-much-do-new-top-level-domains-cost-anyway/
Peter LaMantia says
keymessage.brand is the best – bar none.
What’s that worth – 0.1% increase in response rates – 1% or more.
big bucks on big spends.
Once Nike places a heavy weight TV spot with run.nike, consumer behavior will notice. When we then see drive.bmw, consumer behavior will have changed. That fast.
Who wants a .com cluttering up their brand message. (GoDaddy of all brands announced it will be dropping the .com) In the new world of brand marketing, generic TLDs will be brand tails. Not useful. Messaging is more effective when simple.
Kassy – you were right the first time. All that matters is what works best for consumers of brand services. second level message.brand is it. Technology innovations will address the current constraints on wild carding and that’s just one possible use case.
To wait is to lose an innovation market advantage. some brands will wait because they want to follow. Others will move and stand apart. fun stuff.
Andrew Allemann says
The early challenge with something like run.nike is user confusion.
Nike would be smart to set up a forward from run.nike.com to run.nike.
Another alternative, to make it clear that it’s a URL, is to put http://www.run.nike.
Of course, then it’s less of an “advantage” over run.nike.com.
In the long run — which I know is what Peter is talking about — this behavior may change.
Amnesia says
Agree with Peter LaMantia. It is a new concept and it is difficult to judge based on the current mind-sets. Having said that, all negative comments are based on procedural pains. It is understandable if you are working in the IT department. This is a headache you do not want…… But if you think about business implications in the future of Internet, then benefits easily overcome pains. For example, ask every company if they take .brand or not if it can be changed from .com over night with one click without pain. Probably, almost all of them will take it because it is simply better than .com or .net which has nothing to do with their brand and also it is almost impossible to get the 2nd level domain name in .com for new product name etc….. That means people want it but do not like the process. That kind of obstacle is likely to be gone once a several clever companies implement them well. And also it is important to note that this is not a new pain. They have gone through this with many ccTLDs (country domain) before. So it is not a huge headache. Moneywise, this is a tiny spending for .brand company. Divisional begetting is just a tiny matter in the face of industry changing event.
JJ says
I guess we’ll have to wait and see what happens but I think Peter and others are wrong. Once a few big dogs run their .brand campaigns and realize there is no difference or there is even less of a response, they will fade away.
JJ says
Peter is still unable to address what the real benefit is. So far the only thing is there is no .com at the end…hmmm. not very convincing.
Antony Van Couvering says
Not sure that’s good advice. I’m sure you’ve seen it before: one brand does something on the Internet and then everyone else has to do it. With gTLDs, however, you can only do it when you have one.
For brands that applied, the hard part (and the majority of the expense) is over. There is comparatively little cost in keeping options open.
I think of all the brands that were advised not to register in .net (it’s for networks!) or .org (it’s for not-for-profits!) only to find that other people registered them. Not just cybersquatters (you can get those names back with lawyers and some luck) but people who put up protest sites — legitimate fair use.
No-one’s going to pirate a brand TLD, but my point is that relying on what the world looks like today when you plan for tomorrow is pretty short-sighted when it comes to the Internet.
Antony
Andrew Allemann says
To be clear after the back and forth, I’m not saying a brand should yank it’s existing application. These are just some things it should think about if it’s reconsidering.
If you are going to pull an application, now is the time to do it b/c of the refund schedule.
Kassey says
@Peter Using the second level domain for marketing purpose is very creative! It surely can be done. Consumer education is the key.
Change in consumer behavior is very hard to predict. When iPad was launched, there was a lot of negative comments (including the choice of the name “pad”). In the beginning, government officials were supposed to use .gov domains, but it turned out that even Obama used .com instead during the presidential campaign. So, I can only say that I don’t know how the consumer behavior will change in relation to use of domain names. However, I’m saying that .brand has a lot of benefits and may succeed. Just imagine the complete control you have over the use of your own .brand!
So, we just don’t know how the behavior in using
Kassey says
@Andrew, I’m not saying .brand is absolutely the way to go, either. It’s just a possibility at this stage, and so I’m watching for any sign of opportunities. BTW, I enjoy this civilized discussion. Also, thanks Andrew for your excellent site. I’ve learned a lot from your insights. It’s one the top sites I check almost everyday.
bye bye dot com says
Narrow minded .com domainers.
.travel has made it to the top. why not .brand as well and all gtlds ?
.travel is No 1 in search results now. or you have been sleeping !!
bye bye dot com says
.brand will be even much more successful. it will be recognized and verified.
.com .net .biz etc are going to be past. words are taking over. company network business. etc