I’ve written three different articles about this topic before, criticizing large companies for advertising either Twitter or Facebook urls in lieu of their own brand. For instance, I think it’s dumb for Best Buy to advertise Twitter.com/twelpforce, despite having control over that Twitter handle.
In this case, I want to give props to the NFL for the way they are advertising the new Ticket Exchange program. Â During the Saints vs. Vikings game Thursday evening, the first regular season NFL game of the year, the NFL advertised the url for the Ticket Exchange program, directing visitors to NFL.com/TicketExchange. Â Instead of landing on the NFL’s website, visitors are immediately directed to TicketExchangeByTicketmaster.com, a website owned by ticketing company, Ticketmaster.
Not only is the NFL url easier for people to remember than the long Ticketmaster url, the NFL can also control this traffic. They should be able to track this traffic, and they are building the NFL brand rather than Ticketmaster’s brand.
The only bad thing is that the NFL does not seem to own NFLTicketExchange.com. I am not sure if this is a result of too much traffic or if the site isn’t set up, but when I visited that website, my browser was unable to connect to it. That domain name was registered back in 2004.
Kudos to the NFL for some smart marketing.
Elliot,
just a thought for a possible blog entry…you mentioned Elance awhile ago and I had never heard of it. Very helpful. I thought maybe everyone who wanted to could list their top 5 websites that would be of value to other domainers, might be a good resource. It could be development, or tracking or whatever might help.
One new site could change everything for someone.