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Morgan Stanley & Smith Barney Not MSSB.com

Elliot Silver
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5

Morgan Stanley Smith BarneyOne 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.

She’s a Bonehead!

Elliot Silver
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33

I apologize in advance because I can’t use the specific brand or domain name in this story, but I wanted to share a funny story with you about how some brand managers just don’t take domain names as seriously as they should.

After the party at the GeoDomain Expo, I went out to drinks with some friends at a Jazz restaurant in the Gaslamp Quarter of San Diego (which is a very cool area if you’ve never been). As we were wrapping up our drinks on the patio, a lady came over to the table and started talking to us, and my friend asked if she was attending the conference. She said she wasn’t, and that she worked for “XYZ Company,” which we all know is the the leading brand in the “ABC industry.”

Ironically, my friend happens to own the ABC industry’s category defining domain name, and he mentioned it to her. She was excited about that, and she said that she was a Marketing Manager for the company and they should definitely discuss how they can work together. As luck would have it, she just changed her purse and didn’t have business cards, but she wanted to give my friend her contact information.

My friend said that sounded great and we waited outside on the patio for a few minutes when she went in to the restaurant. After a couple of minutes, I went in and saw the woman dancing by the piano, clearly not even thinking about that category defining domain name that was just mentioned to her. This was a bonehead move and one that could cost them dearly, because it’s without a doubt the best category domain name in her industry.

Protect Your Brand

Elliot Silver
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1

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.

Great Viral Marketing … errr Mistake

Elliot Silver
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3

Apparently Domino’s pizza made a big marketing mistake that was uncovered by someone looking to find a coupon code. The customer entered the word “bailout” when he was ordering his pizza online, and the website responded by saying his medium pizza was free.

The person then told other people about this error, and when all is said and done, there were about 11,000 pizzas given out for free by Domino’s. Although this was apparently an error, the viral marketing can’t be beat. In a move that cost them under $50,000 (assuming their cost per pizza is just under $5.00), they are now getting thousands of dollars worth of free press – not to mention all the sodas and other things people ordered when they found out their pizza was free.

Although this was a mistake, it shows how powerful viral marketing can be, especially in the age of Twitter and other instant news distribution outlets.

Advertising Age Weighs in on gTLD

Elliot Silver
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0

Advertising industry publication Advertising Age weighed in on the impact of the proposed gTLDs today. Although I would have thought an article about the creative possibilities of new gTLDs would have been more appropriate for Ad Age to cover, they focused on the costs associated with gTLDs – both in terms of applying for a gTLD and the cost of brand protection.

While their advice about research is smart, surmising that an up and coming energy drink company would could use a new gTLD (.powerdrink is their example) is pretty far fetched.   I can’t imagine a new brand spending $150k+ to apply for a gTLD such as this – not including costs of managing their registry.

I think there are still a lot of questions to be answered before gTLDs are approved, and Ad Age is correct in advising that their readers look into the implications of new gTLDs.   For readers of my blog, I will be posting an interview with Antony Van Couvering in the next few days, which should provide some good insight into new gTLDs.

Foreign Companies Using .US Extension

Elliot Silver
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16

I noticed something interesting during my travels and don’t know if it’s isolated or more widespread. In several advertisements, I’ve seen foreign companies who do business in the US using the .US extension for their primary American website or in addition to their primary .com site.

Although I haven’t really seen many American-based companies using the .US extension as a primary website, I know that country code extensions are very popular in places throughout the world – especially in some European countries.

IcelandAir uses IcelandAir.us, BMW sometimes uses BMW.us,  ClubMed has used ClubMed.us, Volvo uses VolvoCars.us (forwards to .com) and there are many other examples. It seems to be more of a European way of thinking as many EU people and businesses use their country codes far more regularly than we use the .US extension here in the States.

It’s just interesting to notice, as I have seen the above examples used to target US customers, and all of these companies own their respective .com – they just choose not to use them.

So what is it?   Foreign companies’ marketing departments not thinking like American consumers? A domain extension test?   Something else?   What do you think?

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