Free Columbia B-School Webinar: “Who Should Invest in a dotBRAND?”

Columbia University Business School’s Center on Global Brand Leadership will be holding a webinar on October 19th, and it might be of interest to you. The free webinar is entitled, Who Should Invest in a dotBRAND? Evaluating the Business Case for a Top-Level Domain Name, and it will be held from 10am to noon.

The webinar will bring together experts in the fields of marketing, Internet governance, and general business, including Paul Twomey (former ICANN CEO), William Barrett (Global Brand & Communications at Deloitte), Karl Isaac (Executive Director for Digital Branding at Landor), and Roland LaPlante (Chief Marketing Officer at Afilias).

Here are a list of the topics that are expected to be discussed:

• What types of brands and organizations will most benefit from investing in a gTLD?
• If I am a .BRAND owner what are some of the use cases to best leverage my .BRAND for marketing and brand building purposes?
• How are consumers likely to react to these new gTLDs? Will they provide clarity or confusion to their internet experience?
• How will search engines, social media sites, and other internet properties respond to new .BRANDs?
• What options are there for defensive action to protect my trademarks?
• What are the full costs and processes behind applying for and owning a gTLD?

Personally, I think gTLD domain names are going to impact the domain investment market in a pretty big way. Companies and individuals will be talking about gTLD domain names, and while I won’t predict the impact on current domain values, I do expect there will be an impact.

If you make money from domain investing or online marketing, I recommend listening in on this webinar. It doesn’t cost anything and it’s just a couple of hours.  From my perspective, the smart money is already making moves, some behind the scenes and others with more public endeavors.

Thanks to Name.com for letting me know about this.