If ICANN You Can Too
Own your own TLD that is. Ok, let’s back up for a moment. What’s a TLD you ask? TLD stands for Top Level Domain, it’s the .XYZ or more realistically the .COM part of a URL or web address. Until yesterday the TLD was understood that if you were a business you would have a website that leveraged your business name and ended in .com. For universities and other educational institutions itâd be their name followed by .EDU, .GOV for government and .MIL for the military. Starting early next year marketers will have a unique branding opportunity thanks to the recent ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names & Numbers) ruling to allow individuals and businesses to purchase their own unique TLD.
What does this mean? http://www.donaldtrump.com/ could be http://www.donald.trump/. My use of Donald trump in the example wasn’t by accident, I used him because the right to purchase your own TLD will not be cheap, no, it’s not quite like registering a domain name, a mere $38 bucks for a year, it’s going to cost you a pretty penny, actually about $185,000 worth of pennies. ICANN has setup a stiff registration price to keep frivolous TLDs and those that would abuse the new nomenclature out of the bidding/registration process which leaves the field open to marketers that want to create unique branding experiences on the web.
However, if we think about this for a moment this shouldn’t come as a shock, the web has been moving from a network and collection of pages to a network of people. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that large organizations may want to create their own completely branded networks giving customers, users and prospects total immersion into their brand and product. Thatâs the upshot of paying the rather pricey registration for a branded TLD.
I’m going to throw something out there, the new ruling empowers everyone to create a social network. That’s right. When I think about and ruminate on what this means it kind of feels like companies will scramble to purchase and harness generic product descriptions as TLDs to associate their brand with a whole range of products, like Nikon may want to grab the DSLR domain, and fight with Cannon who can grab the Camera domain name. In an NPR report it was noted that the ABA wanted to take .bank to help combat fraud for all member banks.
When this change comes to fruition we may start seeing very unique marketing campaigns that play off the name, and reduce the entire message to the concept of a domain name as the domain name will more accurately reflect the brand. nikon.dslr is more potent as a domain than say www.nikonusa.com/Nikon-Products/Digital-SLR-Cameras/index.page. Nikon could create entire social networks around the dslr domain and stategically inject their products into threads as netizens flock to forums and gardens where their topics are discussed. I donât see a mass migration from say Flickr to a Nikon branded domain, however, it can be an interesting organic project to grow content within a walled garden defined by a company.product.
There are numerous creative possibilities marketers will now be afforded thanks to the change that reflects the collection of people that define a social network. I don’t think this ICANN change happened in a vacuum, quite the contrary this is a reflection of the power and importance of brand in the social marketplace and how users can influence the way brands are perceived, interacted with, condemned and celebrated. If and when this change happens itâll be a manifestation of a new age and era of digital marketing, you can be sure weâll be there with technology to help marketers make sense of the opportunities because they will be an extension and further evolution of interactive marketing, the mantra and fundamental concept behind our current product lines.
-Len[DOT]Shneyder
Product Marketing Mgr.
IBM
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If ICANN You Can Too