[Sigia-l] URLs and brands

[Damien Newman]

As Jay said - it really depends on how the brand architecture is currently
structured, how it is to be used and is supposed to behave.

If you (or the organization cares) then it can be worth putting the time
into figuring out what is the best option for customers or clients.

Sony has many different types of examples - which is both good and bad,
where they use www.sel.sony.com for "Sony Electronics" but then they also
have www.sonystyle.com. As well as many other combinations for their other
outfits.

Unfortunately for me, as a consumer, it is confusing and interestingly as I
click on on a link to go to Electronics from their home page (sony.com) it
jumps through about three different domain names till it rests on
sonystyle.com/blahblahblah.

Nike seems to always want its name present clearly in anything they do
online, they like to strongly endorse everything - from nikebowerman.com
(which is also bowerman.nike.com/bowerman) and nikelabs.com. But then they
both care a lot about what people can remember in terms of typing in a URL
and cater for all possibilities that might be typed in and redirect you to
where they want.

HP do something funky with putting "the new" before hp.com but it only seems
to be temporarily there, as if it is trying to subliminally convince you of
something. But they have structured, for instance, their Research lab to be
a separate subdomain which can be found at www.hpl.hp.com - Something which
I can never remember, as I don't work there and so I forget that they call
research, hpl. Which suggests this was an exercise in org structure online.

IBM used to have the old Studio Archetype Kasparov vs Deep Blue at
www.chess.ibm.com - which was great as it was easy to remember, and at its
time, it was a vastly visited site. It now redirects you to
www.research.ibm.com/deepblue/

With these examples, they only really prove that you are allowed to do what
you want, but also that it is tied to your current brand strategy in that
the online brand is not always separate from your offline endeavours.

If one of your groups is publishing a magazine and plans to offer a
subscription based archive or features online, then having established a
real need to have a 'branded' experience online, you now need to think of
whether there is equity in the master brand (the organization's identity or
equity) that needs to be present in this sub-brand.

IBM has a sort of strict monolithic identity and handles everything in that
manner. Whereas Nike sort of runs (no pun intended) an endorsement
architecture in how it structures its subbrands.

Booz Allen Hamilton's publication Strategy + Business benefits from the
completely separate identity and seemingly impartial position it takes
separate from their parent organization. It has registered a separate which
people can remember and recall easily.

It doesn't seem to be a major concern for Harvard Business Review, who
prefers to simply sell the articles and magazine through their Harvard
Business Online, rather than building a readership online like BAH do.

So I apologise for the length, but summarize by saying, look at the current
structure of the brand identity.

Is it monolithic, or and endorsed identity? If it is monolithic, then the
slash concept or subdomains are a possibility.

If the parent organization supports an endorsed structure, then you need to
look at how each group will support and build their separate brands. If it
is just an org structure, then as Eric said - perhaps it would be polite to
refuse any type of domain branding. However, the group that publishes a
magazine could benefit from the endorsement from the parent brand, and
again, options one and two would work. If they want to build equity in the
magazine title separately, then option two for them would work.

The British Film Institute publishes the Sight & Sound Magazine, which it
greatly needs the endorsement from the Bfi, however, I suspect that they are
forced to use your option one in URL branding because another British firm
had already purchased sightandsound.co.uk.

Ultimately - recall and management are key. What can you manage in terms of
brand structure - is it wise to make a mess like Sony (unless you are Sony)
and can you produce a URL that your clients and customers can remember -
because that is, I imagine, largely who is going to be typing it in.

I hate to admit this in public - but I work largely as a brand strategist
and have worked on projects for companies like Real Networks and Microsoft.
If that lends any credibility to what I just said.

If you were really, really interested in more details (I would be glad to
help further or...) Kevin Lane Keller wrote an excellent 700 page book
called Strategic Brand Management, Building, Measuring, and Managing Brand
Equity.

I hope something helped.

dn

------------------------------------------------------------
Damien Newman                                d at mdnstudio.com
mdn studio                        phone: +44 (0)709 238 3118
www.mdnstudio.com