Brand Marketing

French Art of Loving: Sexy Lingerie and a Domain Name

Aubade, a French lingerie designer came up with a captivating and eye-catching marketing campaign that has created a buzz, far beyond the Parisian street where it started. For ten days, a lingerie model danced and pranced in front of a lit up curtain just above street level to attract the attention of the curious who passed by the Paris street below.

On the tenth day, the lovely lady revealed herself and pulled across a second curtain, with the visible domain name, FrenchArtofLoving.com. It seems that people *voyeurs* stood on the street with cameras and video cameras to record this fantasy turned reality.

The French Art of Loving website is almost equally captivating. There is an interactive boudoir, and people can click on the dresser drawers to reveal what is in each. IMO, this is a great campaign, and you should see the video and check out their website.

Prayer Cross Direct Marketers Smartly Using Generic Domain Name

PrayerCross.comOne of the reasons I first got into domain names was because of the connection between my master’s degree in Direct & Interactive Marketing and generic domain names. Owning a generic domain name makes the job of a direct marketer much easier, especially when the marketing campaign is done via television or radio. With an easy to remember domain name, consumers have less difficulty processing the message, and it’s easier to send them in the right direction.

Even though I am not in the market for a cross or any type of religious jewelry, one direct response commercial from the holiday season I remember is pitching a prayer cross, a cross necklace that contains the Lord’s Prayer in its “secret center stone.” The prayer cross is being sold by IdeaVillage, a direct response marketing company, and its a part of “Montebello Collections.”

Smartly, the company uses the easy to remember generic domain name, PrayerCross.com for its efforts. They could have just as easily decided that they would brand it using MontebelloCollections.com to offer other products from the same collection. However, these marketers are smart and they know consumers are more likely to remember and correctly spell PrayerCross.com than MontebelloCollections.com.

As the holiday season winds down, I see they are still buying remnant airtime and I think about the domain name every time I see the commercial. I do think they should have purchased PrayerCrosses.com as protection, but it’s now owned by Oversee  Research  and  Development,  LLC. Incidentally, MontebelloCollections.com is owned by OS  Domain  Holdings  VIII,  LLC, with both companies sharing the same address on Flower Street in Los Angeles.

Nice Marketing by Florida Church

5

I was driving on 95 in south Florida tonight when I passed a church on the side of the highway. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t have noticed the, but it had a huge banner on the side of the building facing 95 with a giant URL: ChurchOn95.com. Palm Beach Lakes Church of Christ might not be an easy church name to remember while cruising at 80 mph, but they make sure you remember how to find them online.

The domain name redirects to the churchs’ website, PBLOC.org. Whoever decided to buy the easy to remember domain name made a smart marketing decision. Instead of fighting their assumed moniker, they embrace it so people can easily visit them online. Kudos to the Church!

BTW – Merry Christmas… I thought this was a neat Christmas coincidence!

Online Adwords Campaign vs. Offline Marketing

I am still a novice when it comes to Google Adwords advertising, but I have been learning for various projects. One such project is DogWalker.com, and I have been actively spending money on keyword buys. I got some solid traffic as a result, although the cost was relatively high – somewhere between $.31 – $1.00 per visitor.Overall, the cost per click I am paying is $0.39.

This morning, I tried a more traditional approach, using offline marketing. I posted an advertisement on Craigslist asking for someone to hand out magnets in Central Park for an hour, from 8am – 9am, as dog owners can have their dogs off leash until 9am.   I know people keep this type of magnet, as I have very few things on my refrigerator, but there’s a 24/7 veterinarian magnet on it. She wished the dog owners a good morning and said something to the affect of “if you ever need a dog walker, please visit DogWalker.com.

During this hour, the person I hired handed out around 100 magnets or so. The total cost was $15, which was probably generous, since I had about 30 responses. I think I got what I paid for though because her personality was more than I expected. Anyhow, the total cost per interaction was $0.15 – over 50% less than the cost per click on Adwords.

The big differences are:

  • Adwords targets people when they need a dog walker
  • My Adwords campaign has not simply targeted cities where there are listings, although they should.
  • Magnets have more of a lifetime when they’re put on a fridge, and the interaction lets the person know about the site.

What this means to me is that I am going to be doing more magnet hand outs in parks across the city, and I may lower my rate to $10/hour. I am also going to change my targeting on Adwords and focus on dog owners in cities where I have listings. I will also target people looking to find dog walking jobs/work in a separate campaign.

As much as we spend a lot of time online, we can’t forget traditional marketing tactics.

On a separate note, Bruce Marler had a good post about drinking and driving today… be safe this holiday season.

Twitter Founder Jack Dorsey Launches Company Named Square on SquareUp.com

square logoTechCrunch reported today that Jack Dorsey, founder of Twitter, has launched a mobile payment service called Square. While the actual product/service looks pretty cool, I am surprised that someone with the capital resources such as Dorsey would launch a new brand on a domain name that is different from the actual brand.

The big problem for Square is that they are using the domain name SquareUp.com for their website. This really defies logic to me for a couple of big reasons.

First and most obviously because it’s a mobile payment platform, and people will want to visit the website to learn about the company that will have access to credit card and payment info, and the web address is not intuitive. Many people will visit Square.com to learn about Square, Inc., and they won’t find the information they desire.

Secondly, Square.com is owned by a Japanese company, and the domain name doesn’t resolve. It’s one thing if it resolves to another company’s website, where the visitor can figure out that he needs to look elsewhere. It’s another thing if the domain doesn’t resolve and looks like the company has technical problems. There is nothing on Square.com that would tell a visitor anything but the website isn’t working.

The standalone name “Square” really has no meaning as a mobile payment service. It’s not like the brand actually means something to the product/service, where by sacrificing the brand name, part of the company’s identity would be lost. For example, the Paypal brand has everything to do with a payment service – they’re the “pay pal.”   Square does not have this identity. “Square Up” could be a better brand identity, since people use the term “square up” or “square away” when they need to settle a tab.

This doesn’t seem like a smart branding move for a mobile company – especially one with a $40,000,000 valuation.

Monitoring Whois Searches

5

Network Solutions Email Header

A domain investor friend of mine forwarded me an email he received from Network Solutions today, with the following message:

Subject: The Domain You Searched For Is Still Available: On Sale Now!

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx.net      Buy Now for ONLY $19 >>
Available as of 11/09/2009

Domain names are how people find you online, how you express yourself through email or your website, and it’s what customers think of when trying to find you. Register yours today while it’s still available!

nsWebAddressâ„¢ packages include your domain name registration plus:”
….
etc

I always assumed that domain registrars and companies used Whois lookup data for internal purposes, but I didn’t think a company would use it for marketing purposes. My friend doesn’t believe he did the look up from within an account at Network Solutions, so he was even more surprised that his search was emailed to him.

I know that companies monitor searches and other research, and I’ve warned people to be cautious when doing research, but it just seems a bit over the top when a company sends an email like this. It’s almost like, “don’t mind us looking over your shoulder, but you can buy that name you looked up the other day just in case you didn’t realize.

Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think this is right. I would really like to know how they got the person’s email address, but I can only assume they tracked his IP address to an account there. Personally, I use DomainTools for Whois lookups.

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