Brand Marketing

One of the pieces of fallout of the US economic situation was the merger of Morgan Stanley and Smith Barney, two of the largest investment and financial management firms in the world. The new company dubbed Morgan Stanley Smith Barney began notifying customers of the name change earlier this month via USPS, and the letters were written on Morgan Stanley Smith Barney letterhead, although there is no url cited in the top or bottom of the letter.

The renamed organization does own the long MorganStanleySmithBarney.com domain name, but that’s a pain in the ass to type in and not typo. Clients can still log into their accounts by using MorganStanley.com or SmithBarney.com as they did before, but I would imagine something will change once the rollout has been completed to help with brand cohesiveness and recognition.

Although the domain name MSSB.com was registered and owned well before the merger, MSSB has done itself a major disservice by not acquiring the domain name already. Since the merger came together quickly and was announced quickly to help stem consumer concern, they didn’t have time to negotiate to buy a domain name during this period of time. However, in the months following, they have had plenty of time to acquire it as well as the resources.

The owner has one obvious buyer, and MSSB has an obvious motivation to get a deal done. Let’s hope both parties realize this and work out something beneficial. Every day that the new company operates, the domain name becomes more valuable.

Both companies do seem to understand the value of short domain names, with Morgan Stanley owning MS.com, and Smith Barney owning SSB.com (short for Salomon Smith Barney), although SSB.com doesn’t resolve any longer for some reason.

A local city website from my hometown began following one of my websites on Twitter the other day. I had never heard of this city site, and they have a unique/brandable URL – which I won’t give away for their privacy, but it was something to the effect of CyaInNewton.com. Since I hadn’t heard of their site nor visited before, I decided I would have a look, and I saw that it was a fully developed city portal.

I wanted to check to see if there was more than one site in their network, and while I wasn’t surprised that there weren’t others, I was surprised that they didn’t buy other domain names to go along with their branding, ie CyaInNewYork.com or even neighboring cities like CyaInNatick.com…etc. These domain names are available for their competitors and/or anyone else who wants to grab them at registration fee. I think this is a big mistake.

This company isn’t a domain investment or speculative company, where they are hoping someone else will like their idea and decide to buy it at a premium. They are growing an actual brand on one domain name, and the logical way to grow once terminal velocity is reached is to extend to different markets. While the domain names are available to register now, they might not be in a few months. Although they might have common law trademark rights, getting the domain names they want could be expensive.

I am going to send them a DM and recommend that they grab their brand domain names in other markets. While they may not plan to grow to those markets, it can’t hurt to protect the brand they are working hard to promote.