Corporate Eye

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Susan Gunelius

Susan Gunelius

Facebook Targets Domain Squatters with Brand Name Misspellings for Copyright Infringements

Domain squatting, buying domain names close to well-known brand names, buying domain names that are misspelled versions of well-known brands — these aren’t new things. It’s a problem that brands have had to deal with for decades. Unscrupulous people and organizations buy these domain names with the hope that they can use them to drive traffic from poor people who type the wrong domain name and end up on the wrong site. These domain owners make money through ads and other unethical behaviors.

One of the things I always teach brands is to protect your brand name online by securing your branded domain name, Twitter profile, Facebook page, and so on. Of course, you can’t fight everyone who uses your name or a name that’s oddly close to yours for unscrupulous reasons unless you have extremely deep pockets. Instead, you need to target those that could cause the most harm and the biggest problems.

Facebook is looking to change all that. The company is suing 20 owners of domain names that are misspellings of Facebook.com citing trademark infringement. Owners of domain names like ffacebook.com and facefook.com have been named in the lawsuit, the outcome of which could create a powerful precedent for brands looking to stop unethical use of names similar to their trademarked property.

Typically, trademark infringements occur when there is the potential for consumers to be misled into thinking the accused is the actual company that owns the trademark. For example, if ffacebook.com led you to a social networking site, you could be confused into thinking it really is Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook site. When it comes to cybersquatting, and in this case – typosquatting, trademark violations aren’t quite as crystal clear. There is a fine line between unethical behavior and illegal behavior.

Whatever the courts ultimately decide (and it’s unlikely the case will actually get that far), it’s a problem that brands face every day. With the growing number of domain extensions and the popularity of sites like Twitter and Facebook, more and more fake branded profiles pop up all the time. Celebrities face this problem continuously. Twitter has created its “verified account” feature, but it doesn’t solve the problem of protecting brands on the social web. There is currently very little recourse that brands can easily pursue when these types of trademark infringements or unethical behaviors occur.

What do you think about the Facebook lawsuit? Is it warranted or not? Should there be laws in place to better protect brands and trademarks online than currently exist? Leave a comment and share your thoughts and your own experiences protecting your branded trademarks online.

Image: stock.xchng

Online Buying and Coupon Redemption Continues to Rise

Is your brand available for purchase online? Are there online coupons available for your brand? If you answered “no” to either of those questions, then you need to rethink your online marketing strategy because online buying and coupon redemption continue to rise. If you’re not offering consumers the opportunity to purchase from you online nor the opportunity to save money and boost purchases through online coupons, then you’re missing opportunities that your competitors are most likely seizing.

According to research from eMarketer, 72.6% of U.S. internet users will make a purchase online in 2011. That’s up from 69.2% just two years ago. However, it’s predicted that more internet users will make online purchases in the future driving the percentage up to 76.3% by 2015. That means over 170 million U.S. internet users alone will be actively looking for and buying brands online within 4 years. Someone needs to sell to them. Will it be you?

Of course, coupon clipping has been a go-to promotional tactic for a very long time, and the majority of coupons that U.S. consumers redeem still come from print publications such as newspapers. However, digital coupon redemption is growing steadily. More and more consumers are actively looking for digital coupons to choose the brand and business they’ll buy from, and more and more consumers are being motivated to make a purchase when they see digital coupon savings offers.

Research from eMarketer reveals that in 2009 44% of U.S. internet users used online coupons. In 2011, that number is expected to reach 47%, and by 2013, it’s predicted that 49% of U.S. internet users will use digital coupons. In other words, within two years nearly 97 million U.S. internet users will actively look for and use digital coupons when making purchase decisions. It’s an opportunity brands shouldn’t dismiss.

All eyes are on social media and content these days, but the best marketing plans are fully integrated marketing plans. Don’t forget about the tried and true marketing tactics such as coupons. Instead, apply them to the digital world. That’s where your customers are, and you need to be there, too. Coupons and savings are big purchase motivators. Don’t leave them out of your online marketing strategy.

Image: stock.xchng

Brands Get Another Chance on Twitter with Enhanced Promoted Tweets

This week, Twitter announced on its blog that it’s rolling out an enhanced version of the promoted tweets program giving brands another chance to get in front of Twitter users. The question is how users will react to the new promoted tweets that will appear in their existing Twitter timelines with a small callout indicating the tweet is an ad as shown in the image below from Twitter.

The new promoted tweets feature is launching with 20 brands, including:

  • Best Western
  • Dell
  • Gatorade
  • Groupon
  • HBO
  • JetBlue
  • LivingSocial
  • Microsoft Xbox
  • Red Bull
  • Sephora
  • Starbucks
  • Sumitt Entertainment’s “50/50”
  • TNT
  • Virgin America

You’ll only see promoted tweets in your Twitter timeline from these brands if you already follow them on Twitter. If you follow these brands and they publish a promoted tweet, that tweet will appear at the top (or near the top) of your Twitter timeline (only on Twitter.com). The promoted tweet will scroll through your Twitter timeline like other tweets and you can remove it from your timeline with one click.

Twitter claims that the number of promoted tweets users see will be limited so as not to hurt the user experience. AdAge estimates that four or five ads could be displayed in a single session. Of course, Twitter is quick to point out that users will only see promoted tweets from brands they’re already following on Twitter, so they’ve already expressed interest in receiving updates from these brands. With that line of thinking, Twitter expects the brand promoted tweets to be well received.

Brands pay for promoted tweets through a bidding process where they bid on a per-engagement price and pay when Twitter users actually engage with the promoted tweet by retweeting it, replying to it, clicking on it, or favoriting it.

During the test period, non-profit organizations will also be able to publish promoted tweets. If you follow any of the following charitable organizations, you might see promoted tweets from them in your Twitter timeline in the near future:

  • charity: water
  • Make-A-Wish Foundation
  • Room to Read
  • The American Red Cross
  • Water.org

There is no word on how long the promoted tweets test will last, but it will be interesting to see how Twitter users react to it. Will they stop following brands that publish promoted tweets? Will they be accepting of promoted tweets? Only time will tell.

What do you think of the enhanced promoted tweets for brands initiative on Twitter? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Image: Twitter

Sponsors Prepare with 1 Year until the 2012 London Olympics

July 27th marked the one-year to go date for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. Sponsors are already dropping ads and highlighting their roles in the 2012 Games. According to MarketWeek, at least ten 2012 Olympics sponsors launched new ads and offers on July 27, 2011. The countdown to the Games has officially begun, and sponsors are ready to use that countdown as a form of tease marketing for their own brands.

Adidas is the official sportswear partner of the 2012 Olympic Games in London. A new promo spot debuted from Adidas to mark the 365-day countdown to the Games. The spot features Snoop Dogg, Warren G, and British Olympic athlete and world champion triple jumper Phillips Idowu in a 3-on-3 basketball game against three players from Great Britain Basketball. I’m not sure how Snoop Dogg ties into the Olympics and athleticism, but the spot is shown below. You can draw your own connections.

The London Olympic Games are still a year away, but the list of advertisers and sponsors, which is broken down into a variety of tiers according to BBC News, includes brands like:

  • Adidas
  • BMW
  • BP
  • British Airways
  • BT
  • EDF Energy
  • Lloyds TSB
  • Acer
  • Atos Origin
  • Coca-Cola
  • Dow
  • GE
  • McDonald’s
  • Omega
  • Panasonic
  • P&G
  • Samsung
  • Visa
  • Holiday Inn
  • Transport for London (TfL)

More advertisers and sponsors are sure to sign on before the 2012 Olympic Games arrive as will the number of Olympics-related ads that are sure to be produced. The question is will consumers hit Olympics saturation level before the 2012 Games arrive? Even brands that are not official sponsors of the 2012 Olympic Games are starting to launch tie-in promotions. In London, MarketWeek reports that the top newspapers are already running special Olympics features and Aviva, a British athletics sponsor (but not an Olympics sponsor) is running parallel advertising.

What do you think? With Olympics Games happening every two years rather than every four years as they did when most of us were children, the excitement seems to have waned in recent years. With people around the world having access to so many television channels, so much content, and so many sports at anytime, the “one year to go” message might not be as motivating as it was twenty years ago.

Leave a comment and share your thoughts. Is it too early to start flooding media with Olympics sponsorship messages or is it impossible to reach saturation level when it comes to Olympics fever?

97% of Google’s Revenue Comes from Advertising

New data from a study conducted by WordStream sheds some light on how Google makes its billions and billions in revenue each year. The answer is just one thing: advertising. In fact, during the full year that spanned from the third quarter of 2010 through the second quarter of 2011, Google reported $33.3 billion in total revenue. $32.2 billion of that revenue came directly from advertising revenue.

In a great infographic created by WordStream, the top 20 most expensive keywords by industry in Google AdWords are revealed. Guess what? Nearly 50% of the most expensive keywords in Google AdWords are related to insurance, loans and mortgages. Check out the breakdown below and click the preceding link to see the complete infographic:

  1. Insurance = 24% ($54.91 top CPC)
  2. Loans = 12.8% ($44.28 top CPC))
  3. Mortgages = 9% ($47.12 top CPC)
  4. Attorney = 3.6% ($47.07 top CPC)
  5. Credit = 3.2% ($36.06 top CPC)
  6. Lawyer = 3% ($42.51 top CPC)
  7. Donate = 2.5% ($42.02 top CPC)
  8. Degree = 2.2% ($40.61 top CPC)
  9. Hosting = 2.2% ($31.91 top CPC)
  10. Claim = 1.4% ($45.51 top CPC)
  11. Conference Call = 0.9% ($42.05 top CPC)
  12. Trading = 0.8% ($33.19 top CPC)
  13. Software = 0.8% ($35.29 top CPC)
  14. Recovery = 0.7% ($42.03 top CPC)
  15. Transfer = 0.6% ($29.06 top CPC)
  16. Gas/Electricity = 0.6% ($54.62 top CPC)
  17. Classes = 0.5% ($35.04 top CPC)
  18. Rehab = 0.5% ($33.59 top CPC)
  19. Treatment = 0.3% ($37.18 top CPC)
  20. Cord Blood = 0.2% ($27.80 top CPC)

As Google expands its online presence and its share of audience time and eyes with new tools and destinations (hint – Google+), opportunities for increased advertising revenue continue to grow. Google is a brand that’s well positioned to stay strong in the near future. Of course, how the company uses all of the data that it gathers about the online audience will play an important part in the future of the brand. This is a brand that must retain its brand promise or it will suffer some serious consequences.

However, with knowledge and money comes power. Google has knowledge about a lot of people’s online habits, and Google has a lot of money. Will they use that knowledge and power for good or will it corrupt? We all know what happened to News Corp.

What do you think? How do you think the Google brand will fare when it comes to continuing to deliver on its brand promise to consumers? Leave a comment and share your thoughts about the power of the Google brand.

Image: stock.xchng

WWF and the Greenest Leaflet Campaign in the World

How does a nonprofit organization that works to save animals and nature distribute printed materials to spread the word and ask for donations? Wouldn’t printing all of those materials be a waste of paper and hurtful to the environment?

WWF found a creative way to get around that problem with an ambient media campaign that included the following items:

  • A single copy of a one-page, one-sided leaflet printed on a desktop printer
  • 2 people dressed as pandas
  • A mall with customers
  • An escalator

With just one copy of a one-page WWF leaflet, two people dressed as pandas visited a mall in a campaign called “Pandas in the Mall.” One panda-clad person stood at the bottom of the busy mall escalator and the other stood at the top of the same escalator. The panda at the bottom handed the leaflet to a person stepping onto the escalator to make the ascent to the next floor. When that person reached the top of the escalator, the panda at the top took the leaflet from him. Next, the panda at the top of the escalator handed the leaflet to a different person as she got on the escalator going down. When she reached the bottom, the panda at the bottom of the escalator took the leaflet back. This pattern continued and that single leaflet was seen and read by many people.

However, it’s what happened next in this campaign that made it such a big success. Word spread about the Pandas in a Mall campaign and a video uploaded to YouTube quickly went viral. WWF estimates that within two weeks, WWF had reached nearly 300,000 people through the campaign. Check out the video below to see how it happened.

I love this campaign. It’s simple, clever, and managed to integrate an online and offline component. Whether that integration was originally planned or not isn’t known, but it happened. In 14 days, WWF’s message reached hundreds of thousands of people all for the cost of 1 printed piece of paper and 2 people dressed as panda bears. Kudos to WWF and the creative team at Akcio360 in Hungary who developed the campaign.

What do you think of this kind of ambient media campaign? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.