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Virginia Dept. of Health Gets Clever Domain to Promote H1N1 Vaccine
Tue, 10/27/2009 - 15:30 — Josh Bourne — PermalinkI was watching television the other night and a commercial came on about H1N1 flu vaccines. H1N1, or Swine Flu as it is commonly referred to, has been a hot topic recently, especially as we move into flu season. The advertisement mentioned the importance of good hygiene practices to prevent the spread of the flu, but what really caught my attention was the domain name announced at the end of the spot: h1n1get1.com.
I visited h1n1get1.com and found a simple Web site urging that the H1N1 vaccine is safe and works to prevent the flu, as well as tips on how to prevent spreading the disease and links to the Departments of Health in Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C. Atop the page was the catchy little slogan, “It’s up to you to prevent the flu.” But nowhere on the page was there any mention of an affiliation – I was expecting to see the logo of a health authority like the CDC.
After doing a little digging, I learned that h1n1get1.com is registered to Emily Greenwood, who, according to the email address listed in the WHOIS information, is an associate at Fultz Marketing, a marketing firm out of Richmond, VA. As it turns out, the Virginia Department of Health (VDH) is a client of Fultz’s. The connection between the two became more obvious when I followed the link to Twitter on h1n1get1.com and saw the account was named @VDH_H1N1.
This campaign is an interesting example of how domains can be used. The domain h1n1get1.com is catchy and memorable (plus there is little chance that Internet users will think that the “ones” are written rather than numerical), and it can serve as a means for the VDH to inform the public about H1N1 and ways to treat and prevent it. However, I think it would be better for the VDH to show that it is clearly behind the message and the Web site itself. Not including any reference to the VDH risks making the site appear illegitimate or amateur. Any site can link to the CDC, and wary Internet users might be turned off if they cannot identify the site’s affiliation with a health authority.
The Virginia Department of Health and Fultz have all the tools they need: a catchy domain, a tie-in with social media, and even a TV advertisement for the site. But in order for this campaign to really take off, they should focus on better Web site development in order to utilize the domain name to its full potential.
Brand Hijacking
Thu, 07/02/2009 - 14:58 — Josh Bourne — PermalinkThis week, the Wall Street Journal reported on businesses’ struggle to protect their brands on Twitter. Many are concerned about unauthorized uses of their brand name on popular social media sites—Phil recently wrote a post about usersquatting, the uncertainty of harm that usersquatting inflicts and the ambiguity of enforcement mechanisms to put an end to these infringements—and as a result, many are defensively registering usernames to retain control over their brand. In the WSJ’s article, the sentiment offered by Lee Alexakos, Cedar Fair’s corporate vice president of marketing and advertising, "Our name is our brand, and like any company, we're concerned with protecting that."
This Twitter free for all—unauthorized registration and consumer confusion—can be expected in an unregulated space. Such behavior should get one wondering about how things will be in a newly expanded, unregulated domain name space.
The most recent issue of Marketing News briefly mentioned a survey released by the CMO Council about the concerns that marketing executives have over brand hijacking. The third page of this pdf has some information on the survey. Participants were asked to identify the three types of counterfeiting, trademark infringement or online scams that hurt their businesses most. Cybersquatting was the top response at 28.4%. Also on the list was online scams and phishing using hijacked brands and trademarks, at 19.5%. Among respondents who tracked the financial damage involved in this type of hijacking, 39.6% said the cost was greater than 5% of sales and 8.2% said the cost was greater than 20% of sales.
As more and more brands struggle to recover from the damage inflicted by cybersquatters and brandjackers, it becomes increasingly obvious that the best way to deal with these issues is to prevent them from happening in the first place and being choosy about which 3rd party infringements to address and which to ignore.
Mistaken Identity
Sat, 06/20/2009 - 22:51 — Phil Lodico — PermalinkAnybody who has had a friend sneak onto his or her Facebook profile and change the information knows the heavy reputational damage that can come from being misrepresented on a social media site.
But this harmless prank has a much nastier relative: Userquatting. Similar to cybersquatting, usersquatting is when Internet users register usernames on popular websites to mislead others as to the true identity behind the username. With the openness and ease of use of most social media sites, usersquatters can impersonate anyone from your next-door neighbor the CEO of a major company to the President of the United States. In fact, during the 2008 campaign, a member of the RNC reportedly set up a fake Facebook page in Barack Obama’s name.
Now that many companies have realized the utility of establishing a presence on social media sites, consumers have become accustomed to seeing different brands sending out tweets on Twitter or setting up Facebook and MySpace pages. And unless the usersquatter is engaging in blatantly outlandish behavior, there is little to tip off other users that these accounts are being operated by anyone other than a brand representative. The National Arbitration Forum did an analysis of the top 100 global brands on and concluded that out of those that did have a presence on Twitter, only nine are controlled by the actual company, while 27 are controlled by individuals that likely have no affiliation with the company.
As of this weekend, Facebook began offering vanity URLs to its users, much in the same way MySpace did a while back. A New York Times article reported that since the release late last Friday night, close to 6 million users have registered vanity URLs. But not all of them chose to register their own names. Some chose names of celebrities, like “facebook.com/snoopdog” and “facebook.com/georgebush,” while others opted for a more tongue-in-cheek approach: one user scooped up “facebook.com/twitterisbetter.” The article also mentioned that Assetize, a marketplace where members can sell their online accounts, is auctioning such URLs as “facebook.com/iphones” and “facebook.com/hpcomputers.”
One of the biggest problems behind this issue, in addition to the damage that it can inflict on brand equity, is the fact that enforcement for usersquatting is generally ambiguous and not uniform across different sites. In another New York Times article, Howard H. Weller, trademark lawyer at Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp in New York, commented that “these are all new avenues for abuse, and it’s more resources trademark owners need to devote to policing and enforcement.” And since much of the value of the vanity URL is speculative, brands only time will tell if the scramble is worth it.
Socializing
Tue, 06/02/2009 - 17:47 — Phil Lodico — PermalinkI read an interesting and pretty amusing article in AdAge that compared big brands in social media to Seinfeld’s George Costanza. The author, Reuben Steiger, CEO of brand marketing firm Millions of Us, cited the episode in which George decides that all of his instincts are wrong and that the answer to improving his life is to do exactly the opposite of what he normally would do.
Steiger uses George’s situation as an analogy for how big brands should operate in social media. In short, he says that the traditional marketing mindset does not work in these spaces. Brands can no longer remain larger than life, untouchable entities. This made me think back to an earlier post I read on Mashable, where Tom Smith, the founder of Internet trend consultancy Trendstream, discussed eight ways that the presence of big brands in social media actually benefits consumers.
Both articles get at the same issue: big brands need to utilize social media. With the advent of Web 2.0, consumers have the ability to engage in unprecedented levels of interaction with brands. From reviewing existing products to collaborating on the development of new ones, consumers are constantly getting involved with brands in new and different ways. Social media sites often give consumers a glimpse into companies that would have been impossible only a few years ago. But these developments don’t just benefit consumers; if they play their cards right, big brands will be able to capitalize on these trends as opportunities for growth and improvement.
Participation in social media gives brands unique insight into consumer attitudes and behaviors, which in turn enables companies to develop products and services that match up with consumer preferences. The higher levels of transparency that are an inevitable aspect of social media participation can increase trustworthiness of the brand and improve consumer confidence. This is particularly true in the current economy, where many consumers are forced to choose where to spend their money. Brands that use social media are likely to develop a distinct advantage over those who do not.
