Brand Marketing Archives - Page 47 of 65

Research in Motion’s Tablet Named Playbook

Brand Marketing

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September 27, 2010

Canada-based Blackberry maker, Research in Motion, announced the name of its highly anticipated tablet computer. Once speculated to be called the Black Pad, RIM’s new tablet will be known as the Playbook. The name of the tablet was revealed today at the BlackBerry Developer conference in San Francisco.

Similar to the web presence for Apple’s iPad tablet computer, Playbook.com is being used by another company. For a number of years, Playbook.com has been operated by Marc Lawrence as a sports wagering odds website. It will be interesting to see if RIM attempts to acquire this domain name, assuming they have not been able to do so already.

Interestingly, it looks like BlackberryPlaybook.com was just registered last week. This privately registered domain name currently resides on CSCDNS.net DNS, which is owned by Corporation Service Company, a company that handles domain registration and other services for large companies such as Research in Motion. The domain name forwards to the Blackberry website. Other Playbook related domain names continue to be registered as I write.

Cybersquatters should beware though. Research in Motion has been known to file UDRPs for domain names it believes it has a right to own. In fact, last year, they filed a UDRP for 111 domain names and won.

Bump.com – VC Funded Startup on DigiMedia Domain Name

Elliot Silver

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September 27, 2010

3

Anyone that’s been around the domain industry for any length of time has almost certainly come across DigiMedia-owned domain names. You’ve probably also heard about Scott Day, the company’s founder whose previous career before domain names was in the farming field (pun intended).

I read an article in Mashable about a new startup called Bump, operating on Bump.com (via Berkens’ Facebook feed). Bump is a unique social networking startup that wants people to be able to connect using license plates as the primary vehicle (pun intended). It’s a unique concept, and upon checking the Whois for Bump.com, I noticed that DigiMedia is the owner.

Although I don’t have any specifics about this deal/venture, there was an article about Bump’s funding, which mentioned DigiMedia. According to the article,

“Thrower’s brand new association so distant has lifted $1 million in seed funding, from Digimedia, Tal Kerret (chairman of Oberon Media), Christophe Vandaele (chairman of Vandaele Holdings), Charlie Baker (partner with DLA Piper), Bill Hein (former SVP during EMI) as well as Bob Ezrin (music producer). It additionally is in talks to lift the $6 million Series B turn as well as has done an merger in the imaging record space.”

I believe the DigiMedia team embraces partnership opportunities with best of breed companies and entrepreneurs on some of their domain names. You can have a look at FantasyFootball.com as another example of a great domain name in use by the company.

Its nice to see good things happening for this company. As anyone who has met Scott Day and Jay Chapman (DigiMedia President) can tell you, the company principals are great guys.

Zoosk or Zooks? Who Cares – The Company Owns Both

Brand Marketing

Elliot Silver

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September 23, 2010

2

I was watching some late night television the other night when I saw a commercial for Zoosk.com… or was it Zooks.com? It’s actually Zoosk, and the company did two things I consider smart when it comes to domain names and its website.

The company recognized that some consumers confuse Zoosk and Zooks, and both domain names were purchased. It appears that they bought the Zooks.com domain name from a Harley Davidson dealership called Big Barn Harley-Davidson. Interestingly, it was registered to a company called Media Market in Idaho in between the Harley dealership and this dating website, and I previously wrote about Media Market appearing to make domain acquisitions on behalf of large companies.

The second smart move I noticed was that on the typo Zooks.com domain name, they actually have a small portal built to promote the Zoosk brand and to direct visitors to the correct website. In fact, the Zooks.com mini portal mentions, “Zooks is a common misspelling of Zoosk.”

According to the Google Adwords Keyword Tool, “Zooks” gets nearly 15,000 exact match searches globally each month. By having a website on Zooks.com, the company is ranked #2 on Google for this search, just behind the correct Zoosk.com website. With the top results known to get the majority of traffic from searchers, owning this position as a result of building the mini portal instead of a 301 redirect was brilliant. The company now owns the top 3 results, and it also has sitelinks on the first.

Smart moves for Zoosk!

Viacom Buys RallytoRestoreSanity.com to Support Jon Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity

Brand Marketing

Elliot Silver

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September 17, 2010

34

Will Jon Stewart of The Daily Show really hold a “Rally to Restore Sanity” event on the Washington Mall at the end of October? Will Stephen Colbert follow suit with his “March to Keep Fear Alive?” These two comedic talk show hosts announced plans for their respective rallies, and if the domain registrations are any indication, Stewart’s Rally may actually happen.

According to the Whois record for RallytoRestoreSanity.com, Viacom registered this domain name on September 9, 2010. It’s a smart move, because many companies these days seem content to rely on Twitter and/or Facebook urls for marketing and promotions. Stewart does have both Twitter and Facebook pages locked down, but this domain name with a single page website will be the third prong in a marketing campaign.

On the other hand, it does not appear to me that Viacom secured the MarchtoKeepFearAlive.com domain name. In fact, it appears to be registered to someone named Vinh Pham, and the domain name was just registered on September 16, 2010, the day the show aired. One would think if they would have purchased both domain names at the same time.

On the MarchtoKeepFearAlive.com one page website, there is a link to the “Restoring Truthiness” campaign fundraiser that is hosted on the DonorsChoose.org website. It is a bit confusing and misleading though, especially if the registrant is unrelated to Viacom.

You can see more CNN coverage of the announcements in the video below”

Corn Refiners Association Knows What’s Important When it Comes to Rebranding

Brand Marketing

Elliot Silver

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September 14, 2010

7

There’s an interesting article in the New York Times today about the Corn Refiners Association’s attempt to rebrand the high-fructose corn syrup ingredient that’s apparently earned the scorn and concern of health conscience consumers.

If you’ve ever read the label of just about any type of processed food, you’ve probably seen high-fructose corn syrup close to the top of the ingredient list. I don’t know much about this product, but according to the article and some research published by a market research firm, “about 58 percent of Americans say they are concerned that high-fructose corn syrup poses a health risk.”

I guess in an effort to change perceptions of this ingredient, the Corn Refiners Association has chosen to refer to this ingredient as “Corn Sugar.” The organization smartly bought the corresponding CornSugar.com domain name, and they have information about it on the website.

Perhaps as a result of owning the exact match keyword domain name, CornSugar.com ranks in the top 10 in Google for the “corn sugar” search, despite the fact that the domain name has only been owned by the organization since June of 2010. For some reason, the registration is showing a creation date of June 2010, but if you look at its Whois History, you can see this domain name was previously owned by Buy Domains as recently as May 2010.

Smart move by the CRA to own the brand in .com (.net and .org, too).

NFL Does it Right With Ticket Exchange

Brand Marketing

Elliot Silver

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September 9, 2010

1

I’ve written three different articles about this topic before, criticizing large companies for advertising either Twitter or Facebook urls in lieu of their own brand. For instance, I think it’s dumb for Best Buy to advertise Twitter.com/twelpforce, despite having control over that Twitter handle.

In this case, I want to give props to the NFL for the way they are advertising the new Ticket Exchange program. During the Saints vs. Vikings game Thursday evening, the first regular season NFL game of the year, the NFL advertised the url for the Ticket Exchange program, directing visitors to NFL.com/TicketExchange. Instead of landing on the NFL’s website, visitors are immediately directed to TicketExchangeByTicketmaster.com, a website owned by ticketing company, Ticketmaster.

Not only is the NFL url easier for people to remember than the long Ticketmaster url, the NFL can also control this traffic. They should be able to track this traffic, and they are building the NFL brand rather than Ticketmaster’s brand.

The only bad thing is that the NFL does not seem to own NFLTicketExchange.com. I am not sure if this is a result of too much traffic or if the site isn’t set up, but when I visited that website, my browser was unable to connect to it. That domain name was registered back in 2004.

Kudos to the NFL for some smart marketing.

Brand Marketing

Research in Motion’s Tablet Named Playbook

Bump.com – VC Funded Startup on DigiMedia Domain Name

Zoosk or Zooks? Who Cares – The Company Owns Both

Viacom Buys RallytoRestoreSanity.com to Support Jon Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity

Corn Refiners Association Knows What’s Important When it Comes to Rebranding

NFL Does it Right With Ticket Exchange

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