Why marketeers love .ME brands
No one is questioning the importance of .com. We marketers do love it. Every respectful business of significant size will strive for a .com website. For another next decade it will dominate the Internet. Nevertheless, mighty .com will gradually lose the market share as it already does.
The first issue with .com is that names are getting scarce. Few names are available these days. And those that you still could possibly buy are bloody expensive. There is not a single four-letter .com left unintended. In fact, all good and reasonably short word combinations are taken.
The second driver that is changing the market landscape and taking it to the new frontiers beyond .com is that we, consumer beings, with our human nature, are [very] lazy. We don’t want to remember long names. Many of us struggle with them. Too much information around anyway! How many long famous brands do you know?
Our research shows that the average length of top 100 brands is less than seven letters!
Coca-Cola, IBM, Microsoft, GE, Nokia, Toyota, Intel, McDonald's, Disney, Google, Mercedes, Hewlett-Packard, BMW, Gillette, American Express, Louis Vuitton, Cisco, Marlboro, Citi, Honda, Samsung, H & M, Oracle, Apple, Sony, Pepsi, HSBC, Nescafe, Nike, UPS, SAP, Dell, Budweiser, Merrill Lynch, Ikea, Canon, J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Kellogg's, Nintendo, UBS, Morgan Stanley, Philips, Thomson Reuters, Gucci, eBay, Accenture, Siemens, Ford, Harley-Davidson, L'Oreal, MTV, Volkswagen, AIG, AXA, Heinz, Colgate, Amazon, Xerox, Chanel, Wrigley's, Zara, Nestle, KFC, Yahoo!, Danone, Audi, Caterpillar, Avon, adidas, Rolex, Hyundai, BlackBerry, Kleenex, Porsche, Hermes, Gap, Panasonic, Cartier, Tiffany & Co., Pizza Hut, Allianz, Moet & Chandon, BP, Starbucks, ING, Motorola, Duracell, Smirnoff, Lexus, Prada, Johnson & Johnson, Ferrari, Armani, Hennessy, Marriott, Shell, Nivea, FedEx, Visa (Source: Interbrand)
Yes, it is less than SEVEN (7) letters on average.
A good Markereer would know: the shorter the name, the jinglier it is, the easier it is to remember - the higher the recall rates - the better your sales. Simple logic no one could ever rebut.
It is well known Internet paradox: one will hate to type long and complicated URLs (including that hack of yours truly Dot-Me.Of-Cour.se) despite the fact he or she might spend half an hour browsing through the site, while clicking and reading. The domain name is to be short.
Well maybe one day this blog will move to something4.me. But then for us it is not a product, it is a blog. We don't sell to mass-consumers. We are just fine as Julia MacKenzie is with her IsItMeOrIsEveryOneElseStupid.com (notice "Me" in the URL - Julia is a good marketeer indeed).
Some may say that in the US it is either .com or nothing. Maybe, but as .com, American Internet is losing the market share too. And people on other continets are fine with other jingling English top level domains: .AT (look.at), .BE (LetMe.Be), .BY (good.by), .IN (put.in), .IS (who.is), .IT (print.it), .LY (cheap.ly), .ME (fancy.me), .NO (dont.say.no), .TO (travel.to), .TV (free.tv), .US (juice4.us).
Now, say you are launching a new product. A pizzeria in London, nothing that sophisticated. What name to choose: LondonPizza.com, LondonPizza.co.uk? Of course they are all taken. Are you ready to write a six digit cheque for them? Maybe - depends on your budget. If this is just an ad for a tv campaign or local newspaper, you are not interested in fancy .com. Who wouldn’t mind to save few quids on that cheque and add it to his or her bonus?
Many studies show that nowadays people start to ignore .com semiconsciously. Your choice might be among LondonPizza.tv and LondonPizza.me. Remember, it has to be jingly, it has to make sense. Maybe LondonPizza4.me - thogh this one is already 12 characters - nearly twice the average. Wouldn’t a name like Pizza4.Me grasp the attention of your viewers better? Or how about Hungry.Me? Straight association - on the unconscious level – strong result. Pizza4.Me and Hungry.Me - yes, they will remember these web addresses.
On the other hand, how many products do have “TV” in their brands and/or jingles? Not many, only those related to the television, actual.ly. On contrary, we see “ME” everywhere, just pay attention how many times marketeers attach jingles like “try me” on the packaging in your local shop and you will be surprised.
If you are looking for more examples, just keep on reading through this blog, we provide tonnes of them.
All references: [1 - 3]
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Copy - http://links2.me/~wk32$AS
April 22nd, 2009 at 1:46 am
Agree, now people are opening sites like: heavensenttome.com.
These days, .com is so dead marketing-wise.
April 24th, 2009 at 10:10 pm
Then again, for a decent blog, one has to buy thatwouldbeme.net. Even thatwouldbeme.com is parked… Never mind, too long to type in and somewhat too complicated to remember 😉
May 26th, 2009 at 6:13 pm
[…] Nice video indeed, but .travel is just too long to type and people hate long URLs (for details read our past marketing study). […]
June 10th, 2009 at 3:35 pm
Similar result is retrieved when analysing Top 100 brands by BRANDZ:
The average length is just seven characters.
And then again, those with long names prefer short URLs:
* Bank of America: bofa.com
* China Merchants Bank: cmbchina.com
* Goldman Sachs: gs.com
Branding people at China Merchants Bank could do better than cmbchina.com. One can only wonder what is their online branding budget?
July 9th, 2009 at 3:43 pm
The same hold for average domain name. By analysing the roots of top 1000 Alexa domains:
one can conlude that SEVEN is the average length for all brands, ever.
July 16th, 2009 at 6:46 pm
A brand does not necesseraly have to be short. It help – this is true.
Let’s take a site “Catch ‘n Release Me” – what is important is that it reads as a full sentence!
catchnrelease.me or maybe catch-n-release.me ?
Any thoughts on the above?
July 17th, 2009 at 8:46 pm
Talking long names, BabesAndBillionaires.com is way to long, but with the right concept and big money – it may do a trick, like Brands-and-Jingles.com – the latter is so much easy for the eyes.
February 5th, 2010 at 4:34 am
It is a I enjoy some of the articles which were written, and especially the comments posted! I am going to come back!
March 1st, 2010 at 3:22 pm
[…] Good question. Most probably, because it does not add any extra value and we like short brands, the shorter – the better, do we […]
March 2nd, 2010 at 9:26 pm
[…] names, one ten-letter and one eleven-letter names. All in total 314 names. Marketeers certain.ly love these short jingles. Will ordinary people love them as much? All domains are listed on […]
July 28th, 2010 at 10:10 pm
Somewhat different view from Kate Hutchinson http://blog.ud.com/2010/07/are-shorter-domain-names-more-successful/
Yet confirming, shorter brands are more expensive than the longer ones.
September 4th, 2010 at 1:25 pm
A good analysis of why short names matter: http://www.dailyblogtips.com/on-domain-names-size-and-quality-does-matter/
September 18th, 2010 at 3:50 am
Clowns, who don’t know what there talking about, go ahead get suckered with this bad advice…this is the best way to push there crap to newbies…don’t get suckered with your new so called ‘BS friend’ here..
your wallet is what they want..
November 4th, 2010 at 11:40 pm
Apparent.ly, not everyone likes short URLs, some Finns love really loooonnnnnggggggg, like this one: http://www.siilinjarvenhelluntaiseurakunta.fi/
March 11th, 2011 at 9:21 am
And yet, people also register extraordinarywomentv.me …