All You Need to Know About Brand TLDs

We hope this short video helps to stimulate your thoughts on the wise the wat and the house to think of a brand top-level domain we’re going to focus mostly on why why brands are adopting a brand TLD strategy the brand chill the expansion is a paradigm shift in digital marketing DNS infrastructure youth and service delivery it will change how brands communicate with and deliver services to customers if you stop to think about it branch he’ll DS are really a natural evolution of the Internet we sometimes forget that the internet is very young many paradigm shifts are you have to come and this is simply one already routine brands go live I know firsthand that others are preparing for launch for reference we produce a simple showcase micro site that shows several dozen brands and what they’re doing today simply go to Brad Tod news and have a look some are simple test and learn initiatives others like BNP paribas are in full digital transformation mode these are the first movers they are already gaining a market advantage with experience and learning the digital transformation is here it may take some time but it is starting to happen I think this quote from Bill Gates is quite relevant we always overestimate the change that will take place in the next two years but underestimates the change will take place in the next 10 he goes on to say don’t be lulled into inaction because seemingly nothing’s happening if you think about the Internet’s initial flourishing let’s say 1998 to 2008 everybody thought would happen immediately but it took time and then suddenly everything is different new opportunities emerge new companies were formed and those companies that took no auctions action got left behind mobile and social are two other great examples brand TLD in my view will be similar so i thought i’d share how my thoughts began to gel on this subject and perhaps through my journey you will it will help you you and your team advance your thinking my background is in domains web services and digital marketing dating back to the 1990s I know that domain portfolios are a pain to manage firsthand they’re hard to understand technically with a lot of regulation or costly they often involve several registrar’s several name servers and the data is typically invisible to manage and if you can’t see it you can’t manage it they are also the very foundation of the brand’s digital footprint both is communication tool and underlying network infrastructure the DNS when I can launch the new top level to being program we found out that nineteen hundred and thirty applications were submitted from all over the world generic Geographics community tlds idn and over 600 were brand I was absolutely floored Larry played sauders and Google applied for a hundred and one what really struck me was a brand top-level domains I couldn’t stop thinking about it what does this mean I was going to change the internet what are the new communication and technical capabilities hubbell brands use them to improve the customer success drive business growth innovative communications service delivery and security what are the brand protection challenges and benefits how will that change do brands even understand what they just spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to acquire the answer was clearly know what the other questions still remain knowing what I know about domain digital marketing in the DNS I knew this would change everything but it was still a puzzle to try to unravel my first saw of complexity and how that will grow by orders of magnitude I felt sorry for the intellectual property teams it was their worst nightmare already brand protection workload and costs are high and for the IP manager who holds a large or even modest number of demands for defensive purposes if they continue with that current practice the effort and cost will go through the roof so that won’t work if they did not continue with that practice the expose their brand to new threats this is also unacceptable and even with ICANN working groups on IP mechanisms the whack-a-mole game of hundreds and soon to be thousands of gTLDs are going to be a big business problem there are simply too many vectors for infringement so what a conundrum for the IT teams what should they do and then the light bulb came on brand feel these are the solution to fight against nefarious actors it’s an elegant solution it’s cheaper it’s better it’s bulletproof it’s authentic trusted controlled in secured space set it up and educate your market over time reduce brand production costs and efforts and improve the efficacy of those efforts many companies are starting to figure this out already just ask your CEO what if we can put a moat around our brand would we do it you better do it so this is the first why in why brands will undertake a brand top-level domain strategy defense brand protection advocacy and reduce costs it really does make sense and it just think about it for a moment when you invest in your own space as you educate your markets that this is the authentic brand space you will gain audience trust they will feel secure interacting with your quality authentic brand the more you invest in your space the more you can start to pare back defense and others the pace is up to you the big benefit of a brand top-level domain is digital transformation the graph shows as you cut the festive costs red line items and as you make green opportunity investments that drive business growth and improve the prudence and security trust and gain innovation ROI it’s clearly a better place to be everybody would rather be a point a on this ground so there you have some of the why and the wat relative to using your brand Tod for defensive purposes now let’s move to the opportunity side of the equation this is the part for products and digital marketing leaders there are new capabilities that offer innovation opportunities to drive new business use cases this is the proprietary brand internet built on the massive Commons of the current internet infrastructure it’s a blank canvas for creative minds and market leaders and it’s massively scalable at an economical cost it’s a control space at the root of the Internet where you can create trusted experiences engagement audience delivers with deliver services directly to your partners and channels to access new data streams gain visibility and measure customer interaction with each other and with content and partners the potential use cases are compelling let’s start with the customer I recently wrote a blog post an authentic web blog about the customer experience who wants to be a leader what the customers want how and when do they want to engage with your brand why will they select your brand over the competition and what do they do when they find a brand experience they like uses cases can be developed to deliver focused experiences the customers seek to consume we as consumers have all have attention deficit disorder we are all time constraints we want concise language and experience to provide to us what we want when we want it with ease and convenience we want branch add value to our life and brands that do that will gain our affinity and advocacy what you do depends on your business objectives and the market you serve let’s take a couple of affinity brands this is an example let’s say Nike infer are perhaps they allow fans and advocates to set of experience and microsites let’s say jane doe’s nike john doe doc ferrari let them interact let them build a narrative about who they are how they love and benefit from the brand relationship reward and champion them for activity and excellence as a brand ambassador they will share and influence of the social and drive new prospects to your brand space affinity and advocacy perfectly natural low-cost peer based marketing it doesn’t work for all brands but it certainly is a good news case for some affinity brings now let’s look at the channel the channel represents your brand point point of presence in the market they sell and they service your customers how do they present your brand how do they sell in service how do they engage when the market changes how long does it take you as a brand team and the channel to change their digital presentations how do you control it how do you ensure consistency a couple of examples let’s look at telcos they have thousands of authorized dealers or insurers with thousands of agents or brokers all representing the brand of the market managing channels digital presentations and responding to market change is a huge challenge brand top-level domains with the right technology and strategy will allow you to cascade consistent brand approved content experiences across your entire channel you could be more market responsive and make digital agility in the channel a competitive advantage measure and improve serve the channel give them what they need and when they needed to lift the entire channel better communications better service means customers win partners win brands how about marketing communications this is an easy one think about what you’re doing today in your marketing initiatives particularly as you seek to drive offline eyeballs from TV print and radio to online do you advertise for facebook with facebook.com forward slash promo do you send people to Twitter for a point in time engagement lifts all with the objective to drive audience traffic to a web presence for transaction roi perhaps use subdomain such as www and com still confusing to most or perhaps use directory structures link destinations which are all together forgettable response and conversion rates can be so low many marketers have simply given up now you look grand top-level domains as a new tool communicate with one word one concept concise and simple memorable elegantly branded increased response rates and conversions campaigns that pop that are new better and different easy to communicate easy to remember exactly as that customer expected marketing our line just improved big time so quickly i’m going to talk about how how do you move a big shift like a brand the first step is to gain executive sponsorship with a vision once you have that use a product introduction process they work very well to bring cross-functional teams together for new product introductions it’s a planning process that aligns leadership with team activities to achieve to spine goals move through phases from ideation and strategy to planning and finally go to market phases need to be separated by state games to check alignment and ensure approvals are there to advance these stages are structured in a planning construct that should consider people dory protests and money it’s a big subject but that’s the basis of how i see we’re almost out of time oliver is giving me the old hook so i’m just going to wrap up quickly ran kill these or a paradigm shift every major in a firing brand will eventually on their own already 100 are live with use cases from Captain learn to full digital transformations why will grants adopt both for defensive reasons and for opportunities to innovate along with competitive drivers what will Brandon sue this really depends on each brand’s business objective and how they my capabilities to the new use cases that are available to them and how they go forward they will gain executive sponsorship and they will execute a structured transformation plan so those are the broad strokes I hope it was helpful and it’s an exciting time to think differently the world we know is changing and I’m happy to answer any questions if you’d like to reach out all the best