Marketing Strategies

ICANN’s New gTLD Program Committee (NGPC) is slowly working its way through the Governmental Advisory Committee’s (GAC) advice from Beijing, which made a number of recommendations about implementing the new gTLD program.

The NGPC met on June 4, 2013 and adopted a resolution accepting nine items, the first of the NGPC’s decisions on how to address the GAC’s Advice.

Among the items of GAC Advice that the NGPC accepted, are:

• The GAC's concern that religious terms are sensitive issues and that the applications for .ISLAM and .HALAL lack community involvement and support.
• The GAC's belief that singular and plural versions of gTLDs could lead to potential consumer confusion and the Board should reconsider its decision to allow both.

As part of the resolution, the NGPC also adopted a scorecard, which does the following:

1) lists the nine items of non-Safeguard Advice addressed by the NGPC;

2) indicates that the NGPC accepts each of those items of advice;

3) describes how ICANN will implement the advice.

The NGPC addressed three additional issues, including an applicant’s ability to change it’s applied-for string, protections for intergovernmental organizations, and public interest commitments.

Despite its progress, the NGPC has plenty of work still left on the GAC’s Advice. The approved resolution, for example, does not address the GAC’s recommended safeguards. The NGPC has scheduled three more meetings for June 11, 18, and 25 to address the safeguards and other remaining issues.

Stay tuned for more updates!

As the final stages of ICANN’s New gTLD Program evaluation period approaches, everyone should be preparing themselves for the fact that the Internet is about to change in dramatic ways.

Anyone who uses the Internet will be affected by a tsunami of new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) – the space to the right of the dot – perhaps as many as 1,400 within the next two years. This will mark one of the biggest changes to the Internet since it came into common use.

To gauge the impact of this change on consumers in particular, FairWinds is conducting a series of market research surveys on awareness of and attitudes toward new gTLDs.

The second in this series of surveys was released today and can be downloaded here. A third survey will be released in the coming months as new gTLDs begin to roll out. The first of this series was released in December 2012 and can be downloaded here.

FairWinds’ second survey found that consumers:

• Are open to using new gTLDs to navigate the Internet
• Are willing to trust new gTLDs
• Prefer .BRANDs to .GENERICs
• Prefer direct navigation over search engine navigation
• Expect companies to be technically prepared for new gTLDs

These findings underscore the fact that Internet users are untethered to the past, are open minded, and are receptive to new ways of doing things. FairWinds also discovered that Internet users prefer taking control of their Internet experiences and pay attention to what they type into the browser bar.

Brand owners – whether they applied for a new gTLD or not - can draw valuable lessons from FairWinds’ research. Internet users indicated they expect to see their favorite brands adopt and use new gTLDs and that poor online user experiences will lead to lost revenue and lost marketing opportunities for brand owners.

The better brand owners understand consumer behavior, the better prepared they will be to optimize use of their new gTLDs and remain competitive in the new Internet space.

For those still unsure about whether to plan for new generic top-level domains (gTLDs), consider where the world was when the Internet was just starting out as a commercial space.

In 1995, Wired published an article by Newsday reporter Joshua Quittner, who wanted to know why there was no mcdonalds.com on the Internet:

"Are you finding that the Internet is a big thing?" asked Jane Hulbert, a helpful McDonald's media-relations person, with whom I spoke a short while ago.

Yes, I told her. In some quarters, the Internet is a very big thing.

I explained a little bit about what the Big Thing is, and how it works, and about the Net Name Gold Rush that's going on. I told her how important domain names are on the Internet… 

Sound familiar?

Mr. Quittner ended up registering mcdonalds.com himself after McDonald's didn't seem to know what to do about the available domain.

"I don't have anything for you, and I probably won't have anything for you," she confessed. "I've left a lot of voicemail for people, but no one seems to know anything about it." Jane Hulbert said she'd keep checking around, but she didn't seem hopeful that we could get to the bottom of this domain-name thing. "You'll probably just have to do your story without it," she said. "It probably won't be the end of the world."

McDonald's eventually bought the domain name back from Mr. Quittner, who donated the proceeds to charity.

Fast-forward almost 20 years, and McDonald's is ready for the next Big Thing, with an application in for a new top level domain - .MCDONALDS.

Every once in a while, truly major changes disrupt the status quo in communications, advertising, and trademark protection, altering the way we look at business models. There will always be early adopters and there will always be stragglers. Don't be a straggler as the Internet landscape shifts again to include new gTLDs – the space to the right of the dot.

Even if your company did not apply for its own .BRAND (each application cost $185,000, after all), it can still be an early player by formulating a strategy that allows the company to adapt as the new Internet landscape begins to take a more defined shape. Applicants and non-applicants alike need to look at which second-level domains (to the left of the dot) to register in generic gTLDs. Don't assume that you can ignore extensions such as .NYC and .MUSIC – they may be hot real estate down the line. They may turn into your version of mcdonalds.com.

In the 1990s, people were asking "what is the Internet, anyway?", and now, the Internet is taking another major leap by expanding its real estate.  Hopefully, we've learned a few things about emerging communications platforms in the last two decades that will spur business to better prepared for the .FUTURE.

Tech will continue its march to the more personal, shareable, and portable, according to the presentations coming out of the Wall Street Journal's All Things D conference being held in Rancho Palos Verdes, California, May 28-30. The All Thing D website lists the "10 Things You Missed During the First Two Days of D11" here. For a quick and dirty rundown, continue reading.

Portable and Personalized

Apple's CEO Timothy Cook called the potential of wearable computing "profound," and Disney Parks chairman Tom Staggs presented the MagicBand wristbands "that will soon replaced paper tickets"and may lead to more personalized service and greetings at the Happiest Place on Earth.

Shareable

Silicon Valley venture capitalist Mary Meeker reported that digital information is created and shared at nine times the rate it was five years ago; 500 million photos are uploaded and shared per day, with the trend poised to increase by two-fold in the next year.

The constant sharing of images and thoughts has brought communications to a new level. Everything we do online is part of a very public dialogue that translates into personal, branding – branding we engage in every day, several times a day. Our choices of Twitter and blog usernames and Internet domain names are the most visible manifestation of that branding.  We choose words and names that we think best declare who we are -often building off of our eponymous names, but also off of mottos, taglines, and other tropes we find descriptive.

We talk a lot about brands on this blog, but perhaps Internet users will adapt to the new gTLDs to extend their online personas. Will they aggregate .BRAND pages that represent  their style profile? Proclaim their hobbies with a .SKI or environmental passions with .GREEN?  FairWinds works with brands to brainstorm how best to incorporate new gTLDs into their existing digital presence and find opportunities for innovation and change.

Consumer-generated advertising from a well-known blogger or vlogger can be a major coup for a brand, especially since some blogs and YouTube Channels draw visitors in the seven-figure range. Conversely, a well-known blog or vlog can draw the attention and money from an established brand.

Ad Age recently published a feature on bloggers scoring millions of dollars in funding for their own startups, featuring entrepreneurs Geri Hirsch, the brains behind the "fashion-lifestyle blog" Because I'm Addicted, and Michelle Phan of beauty-tutorial YouTube fame.

Ms. Hirsch's success with videos produced for Barneys New York caught the eye of Youtube-backed video site StyleHaul. S then turned the success of the video into a StyleHaul investment in her new video lifestyle brand venture, Leaf (which, according to the YouTube page, is " a fresh, easy to consume, how-to concept covering all things... living, eating and fashion"). Ms. Phan used her success to start a monthly "beauty bag" subscription service – a sort of makeup of the month club that delivers new cosmetics bags of loot each month, and which now has $1.5 million in monthly sales.

The branding success of these two bloggers could bode well for creative use of the new gTLD .BLOG – beyond a community of bloggers sharing thoughts, photos, and experiences. As blogging and marketing become more integrated, will blogs look more like  .BRANDs with reviews, launch events, and new places to feature how-to videos of products? Will domain names ending in .BLOG host more "lifestyle" portals, where brands are woven into the blog content?

And how will .BLOG be integrated with existing services that gather bloggers into communities, such as Collective Bias, which Brandchannel describes as a "platform where brands such as Tyson, Nestle and Smart & Final pay for their products to be covered by relevant bloggers who push that content across social media"?

Nine companies, including Google, applied for .BLOG so the content of that gTLD likely will be tied to the company that wins the extension.

With the growing role of bloggers in brand marketing, .BLOG is a generic gTLD that brand owners should watch – not just as a place to register domain names but also, for opportunities to collaborate with bloggers.

After this weekend, many blogs are, as expected, buzzing about the commercials aired during the Super Bowl. But there is another commercial that began airing a few weeks prior to this weekend’s big game that caught our attention here at gTLD Strategy: online travel agent Booking.com’s newest “Booking.Yeah” TV spot. You can view the ad here: (more...)

Launching a new brand can be tricky, whether you're a new enterprise making your move onto the global stage or an established corporation looking to expand your offerings or broaden your image. One thing that can help ensure the success of a fledgling brand, though, is a great domain name to support it. In addition to providing a platform for the new brand, owning a great domain can reinforce the brand in the digital world. And in some cases, a great domain can become a great brand. (more...)

New gTLDs are on track to begin delegating into the Root Zone as soon as the second quarter of next year. With the first launches fast approaching, brand owners and other new gTLDs applicants have been gathering information in order to form strategies and make decisions about how they will use and market their new gTLDs. But a crucial piece of information has been missing – until now, that is. (more...)

We largely focus on brand owners here on the gTLD Strategy blog – how brand owners will be affected by new gTLDs, how those brand owners that applied for new gTLDs can effectively integrate them into their digital strategies, etc. But all told, strategic companies were only a portion of the total pool of new gTLD applicants. By FairWinds’ calculations, approximately one-third of all new gTLDs applied for were brand names. When you strip out the duplicates, brand names make up about half of the total group of potential future gTLD strings. (more...)