A company called Massdrop announced a rebrand to Drop, and smartly, the company was able to acquire the matching Drop.com domain name in advance of the rebrand. Here’s why the company opted to rebrand from Massdrop to Drop, according to an article from Christian de Looper who wrote about the rebrand this morning in Digital Trends:
“Massdrop wants to make its branding a little snappier and easier to remember. To that end, the company announced a massive rebrand. Now, the community-driven shopping site will be known simply as Drop. On top of that, the company announced a number of new products.
If you’re unfamiliar with Massdrop, now known as Drop, the service primarily uses data and insights from enthusiasts to create its products — while providing a platform for customers to give insight and opinions on those products. The website itself is pretty well-designed, too.”
The Drop.com domain name has had Whois privacy enabled at GoDaddy since August of 2017, so I am uncertain of when this domain name was acquired. As of the last public Whois record from earlier in 2017, the domain name had been owned by a company called Drop Inc. I reached out to the former registrant to see if he can comment about the sale of Drop.com, and I will share an update if he replies to me.
I looked through my email, and I see that Drop.com had been offered for sale via Brannan’s newsletter in February of 2017. At that time, the asking price for Drop.com was $800,000. I reached out to Brannan’s David Clements to see if his firm brokered the sale of Drop.com, and he told me he did not.
According to Crunchbase, Drop has raised nearly $50 million in funding through Seed, Series A, and Series B rounds of funding.
Not only did Drop smartly acquire the brand match Drop.com domain name, it also managed to secure the @Drop Twitter and Instagram handles. It does not appear that the company was able to secure the matching Facebook handle (yet).
I reached out to the team at Drop to see if they can comment about the domain name acquisition, and I will share an update if they are willing to comment.
Thanks to @MarkUpgrade for sharing news of the rebrand via Twitter this morning:
HUGE upgrade! Massdrop rebrands as Drop. They smartly acquired the EBM (#ExactBrandMatch) #domain Drop(.com). Global reach? Lower #marketing costs? More direct visitors and stronger #brand image? They have everything now. Congrats, @Massdrop 👏🏻 https://t.co/zQDiiCIaqZ #Domains
— MarkUpgrade (@markupgrade) April 29, 2019
Definitely a mic drop domain.
mid 7 figure asset. smart and professional move also to acquire the twitter handle. congrats!
Facebook is irrelevant anyway. Stick to your website and ONE social media channel to communicate with your customers. Right now Twitter is the gold standard.
Why would it be worth mid 7 figures? And how is Facebook irrelevant while Twitter is the gold standard? Facebook has 8x the usage.
End user comp. sales, Snoopy. Ring.com was sold for $1m, later valued at $50m when the company was purchased by Amazon. Snap.com was sold for $5m to Snapchat. I’d see drop.com somewhere in between, likely around $3m.
I was not talking about MARKETING channels, I was talking about a communication channel. Marketeers still use FB, yes, because they have access to a bigger target audience. For corporation to customer communication however, Twitter IS the gold standard, there is just no way around it. On top of that recent numbers show that you only reach 5-6% of your followers on Facebook when you post something. That is the organic reach. For the rest of your 95%, you have to PAY. Marketeers are fed up with it and that is why FB will become a ghost town in the coming years. At Twitter you can still reach 30-40% of your followers organic, without a paid boost. Huge difference in the outcome. PR guys just love Twitter. That is why they opt for the domain + matching twitter handle.
While the domain name itself is a good asset, I think the word “Drop” is too generic and can be confusing, especially in oral conversations and news broadcasting. Therefore, I would not call it a good rebranding.
It’s like the case of UserEngage rebranded to User. The word “User” is too generic and can be confusing.
They probably just want shorter. I strongly suspect the shorter the name is the more likely a customer is type in the web address rather than do a google search, so going shorter could save money in terms of adwords budgets and potential sales lost to competitors if they did a google search instead.
There would also be some credibility/trust value in using a one word name, it looks expensive whereas massdrop could be any fly by night company. I think they have made a good decision as long as the changeover itself goes smoothly.
The marketing consideration is understandable. But I’m not sure if the masses think that one word names look credible and expensive.
Well you may need to learn about the masses then.
Ethan, in marketing the golden rule is: Shorter IS better. Sorry but that is the truth. Everyone of us is targeted with something between 3000 and 5000 ads per day (!). Based on your location and consumption of course, direct and indirect. That means that your brain has to filter all these ads from relevant to irrelevant, from important to unimportant, from good to bad and from easy to remember to easy to forget.
Shorter means you have to spend less on marketing, not more. Shorter means you save money over time that you can invest in your product or R&D. Read the story about 360buy / JingDong rebranding to JD.com. Eye opener!
From their official press release in 2013
“This rebranding exercise from 360buy to JD will help foreign investors to make more sense of its corporate naming. Richard Liu Qiangdong, founder and CEO of Jingdong said in today’s statement:
Jingdong is delighted to streamline its corporate brand and launch the simpler JD.com domain, which will be easier for our Chinese customers to remember.
U.S.’s Amazon also made the same move by launching Z.cn which helps Chinese customers to remember the domain name better.(…)”
As far as I know, “shorter is better” in marketing refers to content or copywriting, not to branding.
Besides, in my opinion, JD.com is a domain name, not a brand name.
“Besides, in my opinion, JD.com is a domain name, not a brand name.”
Why can’t it be both in your opinion? 🙂
Because that‘s exactly what it is.
You‘re wrong regarding the marketing aspect. Do you know the Siegel+Gale simplicity index?
http://simplicityindex.com/
http://www.transformmagazine.net/articles/2019/insights-why-simplicity-pays-when-brand-building-for-tomorrow/
A 6-syllable name is of course not good, most of the time. If I were Simplicity Index, I would surely rebrand, too. In fact, I would not even use a 6-syllable name in the first place.
But rebranding from a 3 or less syllable name to a 1-syllable name is not always better.
I don’t know who you are, apparent newcomer, but I’ve already destroyed that industry-harmful brainwashing zero sum thinking myth in these blogs many times over now, and I’m far from alone. That was 100 miles ago already, and the “debate” is over.
https://www.google.com/search?q=morganlinton+two+word+domains+.com
Even Rick Schwartz will readily say (and has) when a longer multi-word domain is superior to a single word shorter one.
But to summarize for the readers you may have just contaminated all over again:
1. It’s not either/or, but both/and
2. Sometimes longer is better, and shorter is not always better
3. Honest communication about the matter means addressing true quality examples, not bogus examples to push a bogus argument.
4. To illustrate with just one example of my own, Staples.com by itself is relatively worthless compared to a *vast multitude* of quality much longer domains.
5. To use an example Rick Schwartz recently used: FastLane.com and ExpressLane.com are better than just Lane.com.
”That was 100 miles ago already, and the “debate” is over.“
LOL, ok pal. Go ahead and talk about sth. else then. I for one will debate about what I want. 😉
I‘m talking broad scale marketing while you are still lost in a lane vs fastlane world. Step up.
Weak, fail. But you’ll learn. If I stick around.