Brand Marketing

In September, I reported on the sale of the Rocket.com domain name. Rocket.com was sold for an undisclosed amount of money in a deal overseen by Andrew Miller of Hilco Digital. Following the sale, the domain name was transferred to CSC under Whois privacy, leaving the identity of the buyer unknown.

I have been periodically visiting Rocket.com and checking for any Whois or nameserver updates to try and learn who acquired the domain name. This morning, a new landing page appeared on the domain name, and the buyer has been revealed – Rocket Companies, Inc.

Yesterday, TechCrunch published an article about Zoe, a startup that recently raised $15 million in additional funding. To date, Zoe has raised $118 million in funding. Notably, this startup uses the brand matching Zoe.com domain name for its website.

In looking at some internal pages on Zoe.com, I was able to see the company got its start on the off-brand JoinZoe.com domain name. Wisely, JoinZoe.com now forwards to Zoe.com.

G.O.A.T. Foods operates a number of confectionary and food-related brands on exceptional one word .com domain names. You can buy licorice via Licorice.com, you can buy chocolate via Chocolate.com, you can buy pretzels via Pretzels.com, and you can buy caramels via Caramels.com.

The company’s authoritative domain names are coupled with great branding, and they go beyond e-commerce websites. I have seen GOAT Foods’ branded vending machines at various points in my travels. The business model seems to be working for the company, as evidenced by its growth and development of new brands.

Last night, GOAT announced the forthcoming launch of Cookies.com. As you can imagine, Cookies.com will sell cookies:

Last Summer, it was announced that Nick Huber and Shaan Puri invested in a company known as Support Shepherd. Last week, the company rebranded as Somewhere after acquiring Somewhere.com for $400,000.

There was a big discussion about the rebrand and domain acquisition on X. Yesterday, Shaan posted a poll on X asking people if they think it was worth $400k to acquire the domain name for the rebrand:

We spent $400,000 on the domain https://t.co/gWHLlUAraL to rebrand Support Shepherd.

What do you think – Worth it or Not?

— Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) May 21, 2024

With more than 10,000 votes cast, 70%+ answered “no.”

As you know, Elon Musk rebranded Twitter as X last Summer. Last week, the company began forwarding Twitter.com to X.com, a domain name Musk acquired from PayPal in 2017. Incidentally, this domain name was reportedly acquired with the brokerage help of Media Options.

With the seemingly successful domain name change to X.com, I am wondering if this change will inspire other companies to undertake a similar type of rebrand. Migrating a website to a new domain name without harming the business is not an easy task. It can cause problems for a business if not done correctly – not to mention add stress to the employees responsible for ensuring business continuity. X may have proven this can be done on a very large scale.

This morning, I posted a poll on X asking people if they think this rebrand with domain name change will have an impact on other companies considering the same. Vote in the poll and/or share your thoughts below.

Will the seemingly successful X rebrand and domain name change lead to other companies undertaking similar efforts?

— Elliot Silver (@DInvesting) May 20, 2024