Say you have a product that is in a quickly saturating market. How do you get your product to the forefront of this market? If you are Unilever, you rename the market and own the new market.
I have high(ish) cholesterol mostly due to genetics, although it has been going down as a result of my eating and exercise habits. I frequently pay attention to cholesterol reduction products, and I found something called Promise Activ Super Shots, which has plant sterols, that supposedly help reduce cholesterol. They taste pretty good, so I take one whenever I can remember to buy them at the store.
Today I finished the last of the four pack, and as I was throwing out the box, I saw “REMOVE CHOLESTEROL” in big blue typeface. When it comes to cholesterol, I usually see keyword phrases like, “reduce your cholesterol,” “cholesterol reduction,” and “lower your cholesterol,” and this is the first time I saw “remove cholesterol.” I did a Whois search, and sure enough, RemoveCholesterol.com is owned by Unilever, the parent company of Promise, and it was registered in 2007.
It appears that Unilever has created, branded and defined this keyword phrase for their products. With all the competition for the popular keyword phrases, it’s a smart move to create a new one. Now if they would only forward traffic from this domain name to one of their brand websites!!
Elliot
funny you are writing about this!
2 days ago, I was listening to a Kate Nash song, ‘Mouthwash’ and whilst listening, I checked mouthwash.com and It did puzzle me as to why the address did not resolve to a website! whois revealed Unilever again!
further probing into their domaining assets shows that they
are making good use of some:
.. and good lord,.. what a collection!
-There’s some smart people at Unilever
Eat.com
Mayo.com
Suave.com
Sauce.com
PeanutButter.com
BestFood.com
EasyIron.com
Soup.com
SoupSecrets.com (showing different to above)
Soups.com (domain servers at DNS02.UNILEVER.COM)
Chatea.co.uk ??? I didn’t get this one!
iglo-eskimo.com
Dove.us
All.us
GoBlue.org
CarbZone.com -not resolving
Lever.com
and thousands of others!!
they seem to own a lot of ccTLD hacks as well!
Clearly a company which ‘gets it’ !
Best,
Ritz
PS: do the plant sterols really work?
I’m on statins (for life) . Same genetic problem.
***UPDATED BY ELLIOT***
Not sure about the sterols. I take the drink shots occasionally so it’s not a good indicator. I dropped my Cholesterol by about 15% over the last year though 🙂
I think you’re on to something here. Phrases don’t exist until someone utters them. It would make more sense to make your customers adapt a new phrase you can control versus competing in saturated keywords your competitors already spent billions to brand.
I’m launching my personal blog using the domain name TargetAudience dot com. I think certain common terms and phases work very well. The key is the word “Common” phases. Don’t overthink it and reg things like LeadingContractors.com or TopWeddingSites.com. Stick to something you see used alot with certain contexts.
If you are liking the supershots, you also might to try the kardea gourmet wellness bar with 1g plant sterols, 7g fiber, 7g protein, vegetarian and only 150 calories. Delicious too! Email customerservice@kardeanutrition.com for samples.
Very funny that they let the name mouthwash.com drop today! Somebody is getting fired?!