Paul's posts

14 April 2009

The largest marketing and branding exercise in history?

Paul Greenwood Social Media Analyst | Read all Paul's posts

2010 will see the dawn of a new era for web addresses. No longer will you be confined to the simple .co.uk, .com, .org and .net.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) oversees web addresses and, from next year, it will allow domain names to contain any number of possible suffixes (it currently allows just 21 domain suffixes).

The plans are for ICANN to charge between $100,000-$500,000 per domain, along with a $60,000 annual fee, which in my book is a nice little earner.

The significance of the decision means any number of domains could be created – just let your imagination run wild. And the marketing / branding opportunities are massive – .worldcup or .olympics, any one?

A word of warning
But according to The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the UN agency which handles challenges by trademark holders to proposals for new domains, the new rule is certain to increase trademark rows, confuse consumers, undermine public trust and have companies rushing out to register brand names against cybersquatters.

This also comes at a time when WIPO released figures showing such disputes reached a record 2329 last year. And it’s difficult to see how disputes will remain at such a level once the new domain names come into existence without tougher rules and sanctions.

So the question is: how prepared are you for one of the largest marketing and branding exercises in history?

Any statements made in these blog posts are the views of the blogger and do not necessarily represent the views of The Group.