I had the incredible opportunity to be invited to speak at the Domain Name Association breakfast meeting held at the ICANN 53 Meeting in Buenos Aires, Argentina this past week. While I didn’t attend the whole ICANN 53 meeting, I was able to attend the event on Monday and Tuesday for two full informative days. On Tuesday night I flew from Buenos Aires to Toronto, Canada, where I spoke at the ClickZ Live conference. Speaking at these two events during the same week gave me a unique perspective. I met with some amazing minds behind the New gTLD domain names and domains in general. And then met with a lot of marketers who are not directly involved in the domain name industry. What did I learn?
I learned that many in marketing don’t know anything about the new gTLD domain names. They generally are responsible for the day-to-day marketing (digital marketing) for major brands, yet have never heard of the new domain extensions. And when I mentioned .brand, one corporate marketer, responsible for a Fortune 100 brand (a product that I have in my home and use every day) had never heard of .brand, and the opportunity to own their own extension.
This shocked me. A C-level executive at a Fortune 100 company had not heard of the .brand opportunity to own their own domain extension.
When I mentioned this to her, she was very excited–and instantly began thinking of the possibilities. She told me that she had not heard of .brand, and would immediately investigate it and most likely apply when she got back to the office.
While I personally have been very aware of the new gTLD domain extensions and the .brand opportunities, it wasn’t until I was in Toronto this past week speaking directly to Chief Marketing Officers of Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 companies that I realized that the domain name industry still has a long way to go. It will take some additional time until corporations realize what a great opportunity the new extensions are, and that they can own their extension.
