A global strategy for protecting your online brand

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A global strategy for protecting your online
brand

• Jonathan Robinson
• Chief Operating Officer
• NetNames

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NetNames

• European market leader over 30 of FTSE 100
• Ability to register in over 220 countries
  worldwide
• ICANN accredited registrar
• Over 10 years industry experience
• Offices in the US and Europe
• Part of GroupNBT plc

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Domain names

• Domain names are the basis of all web URLs and
  email addresses
• The fundamental off-line to on-line link, the
  brand navigator
• Every business should have at least one domain
  name
• Generally available first come, first served and
  all operate globally
• New names, name systems and modifications
  continually introduced
• The value of a domain name is substantially
  higher than its cost

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How does the industry work?
Registries (Database managers)
Registrars (Database users)

• e.g. NetNames
• ICANN Accredited, Technically Qualified,
  Operational

e.g. Easily.co.uk, Wanadoo, NTL Domain name
registration, renewal, DNS, email, web-hosting
Service providers
End customer
Consumer, SOHO, SME, Corporate
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Latest trends

• Approximately 120 million domains registered
  worldwide
• 32 increase in domain name registration from
  2005 to 2006
• Over 10 million .de domains now registered
• Over 11.6 million new domain names registered in
  the Q4 2006
• More than 240 ccTLD extensions globally
• 31 increase in ccTLDs end of 2005 to end of 2006
• Domain names now available in 39 character sets
• Increased usage 86 domain names resolve to a
  website
• Now driven by much more than simple registration

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.uk Registrations
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Recent developments

• After .info, .biz, .museum, .travel .
• .eu
• 700,000 applications in first 4 hours
• 1.5 million registrations within first week
• Lastminute.eu and polo.eu (Volkswagen) lost out
• .mobi
• .xxx
• .asia
• Covering 73 countries in the Asia/Australia/Pacifi
  c region
• Domain name disputes
• resolved by WIPO
• 2006 cases rose by 25 (to 1,823)

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Growth in online marketing

• Online advertising spend increased by 41 in 2006
• Advertisers are continuing to switch more of
  their budgets online to build their brands and
  interact with their customers
• Over 70 of TV ads, 80 of press ads and 22 of
  radio ads incorporate a domain name
• Domain names are brands in their own right
• ebay.com
• Amazon.com
• Domain names are and remain valuable
• Business.com sold for 7.5 million
• Vodka.com sold for 3 million
• PPC is a key driver affects all aspects of
  domain name lifecycle

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External threats

• Domain name tasting / kiting
• Cybersquatting fuelled by PPC
• Cybersquatting grew by 25 during 2006
• Cybersquatting hits celebrities
• David Beckham announced move to LA Galaxy at 3pm
• lagalaxy.org, lagalaxy.info and lagalaxy.co.uk
  registered by 417pm
• Linked to sites featuring pay-per-click
  advertising
• Typosquatting
• exbox.com
• windowsexp.com
• Goggle
• Alliance and Leicester

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Typosquatting (goggle.co.uk)
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Hyphenation / Typosquatting
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Mistaken identity
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Domain names become a legal issue

• Baa.com settled outside of court purchase /
  recovery?
• DELL lost out to Paul Dells dellwebsites.com
• Microsoft settled out of court with
  MikeRoweSoft.com
• Bill Gates stock photography company CorbisVery
  recently failed to get Corbis.net from small web
  design company
• Microsoft 2006 - Average of 2000 domain names
  registered per day containing MS trademarks,
  three quarters owned by professional speculators

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Why bother with domain name management?

• Much more than registration
• Google failed to renew the Google.de domain name
• It expired and someone else had registered it
• Site was down for many hours
• The site showed a standard registrar parked
  page
• Google as industry leader and internet expert

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Memorable Campaign URLs / CURLS
bethefullstop.com
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Memorable campaign URLs / CURLS diy.com
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Registering variations on a CURL
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Registration and management tactics

• Offensive variations inner circle
• Account masking to register brand names in
  advance of launch
• Names associated with the business area e.g.
  DIY.com
• Memorable domain names e.g. quotemehappy.com,
  reliablecopiers.com
• With and without a hyphen
• Renew more minor variation Campaign names to
  ensure that potential customers still using the
  campaign URL are directed to up to date
  information
• Defensive variations outer circleMay avoid
  risk of inappropriate content on similarly named
  sites e.g. whitehouse.org and whitehouse.gov

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Domain name management in practice

• Step 1 Choose a specialist corporate vendor
• Step 2 Consolidate and tidy up existing domain
  names
• Step 3 Implement a corporate domain name policy
• Whose mandate is it to manage?
• Which brands to register and in which countries?
• Hyphenations, misspellings, etc.
• Step 4 Identify potential infringements
• Step 5 Monitor for new infringements and changes
• Use a news feed to keep current

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Unilever case study 7,500 domain names in three
months

• The challengeUnilever has the worlds largest
  trademark portfolio and needed their
  corresponding domain portfolio to work at
  securely in protecting their brands online. They
  also wanted to minimise the internal resource
  spent on all IP management.
• The solutionNetNames partnered with legal firm
  Baker McKenzie who manage Unilevers trademarks
  to offer Unilever a single agreement. NetNames
  then transferred Unilevers 6,300 domains within
  three months, all with little impact on Unilever.
• The resultsThis partnership and single point of
  contact allows Unilever space to focus more time
  and resource on core competencies.

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Prevention is better than cure

• Gartner research1,000 to 100,000 times more
  costly to recover a single domain name than to
  budget for proactive domain name management
• Legal recovery process can be lengthy
• Be informed and act accordingly

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Free Domain name guide from stand W418