discuss Is it time to thiink new about 'radio test'?

[Bob Hawkes]

There has been heated discussion in some blog comments about the recent thiink (com) sale for $50k. I think too often domainers jump to say those outside the community, whether end users, startup owners, branding experts or marketing specialists, are wrong about domains. I think it would be more productive as domainers to ask what trends are we seeing, and adapt to them if we think they are likely to persist.

In this case many criticized the name based on radio test. This caused me to look at past week of highest value sales on NameBio, and thiink is far from alone. I just tweeted this summary:

What do thiink, nuuday, ejemplos, centure, veridic (com) 4U (tube) have in common? 6 of 14 non-numbered domain sales >$10k in last week probably struggle with radio test. We should constantly ask ourselves: Is your domain 'truth' up to date?​

I suspect if brandable marketplaces published their sales the radio test 'fail' ratio would be much higher.

Now I am not arguing to ignore the radio test, but rather we should be alert to trends in branding of late. Sometimes I think we are too resistant to changing views.

Bobb (AKA Bob )

BTW I think the end user is always right. They know their business and what aspect of the domain name is important to them.

I am sure this will generate discussion!

 

[bmugford]

I thiink you could do better for $50K.

Brad

 

[Internet.Domains]

Branding is not an exact science. There is a lot of creativity and for that reason there will always be amongst the good, many scraps and outliers.

Creative people tend to be psychologically very stubborn. Creative people have their style and are often not flexible if change is desired. The combination of creativity and stubbornness can lead to both good results, and bad. In the case of misspelling domains, I feel it is the latter.

Of course you will find some success with some of the outliers, but when you look at the very top companies, the outliers are near non-existent.

 

[karmaco]

Not a lot to analyze really. They wanted the word think, were unable or unwilling to pay to get it and chose thiink as an alternative.Not rocket science really and still pronounced the same as think.

The real story should be how the owner came to get that price. He did very well.

 

[mr-x]

...
BTW I think the end user is always right. They know their business and what aspect of the domain name is important to them.

This assumes people / companies don't make mistakes. I can't think of a single reason to create a brand that will likely cause confusion.

Rakuten's re branding of buy.com is costing millions but at least it's easy to spell.

 

[Ategy]

Hi Bob .. pretty sure I've said most of this before .. lol .. but a big part of the issue is missing here.

One being that pass/failure of the radio test isn't an absolute ... there certainly are different levels .. some are more workable than others.

But a vastly even more important point though .. is the marketing budget of the buyer. A unique/creative domain can actually indeed be a positive thing *IF* the company has a huge marketing budget and plans to make big advertising spends through avenues where the radio test is less relevant. But there are soooo few such acquiring companies that the numbers simply don't come anything close to making sense to hold 99.99% of such domains. (I personally don't think that thiink.com would be a bad HAND-REG investment .. but most miispells are extremely bad investments even with a $1 acquisition cost).

Here in Canada we have a new online bank (pretty sure it's yet another subsidiary of one of the big 6) called Simplii ... it's a horrible domain name .. but in their advertising they play around with the two dots of the two i's which effectively makes the domain very memorable (although I think their using the .ca instead of the .com .. but that's another discussion .. lol). More importantly though .. they have a truly colossal marketing budget to overcome the radio test.

But yet another massively more important point .. from the perspective of the domain investor .. unless it's an extremely rare super exception because it's a unique/strong/cool misspell .. then it simply is not worth investing in these domains.

The reason is because of the multitude of potential variants. You need to buy and hold significantly more domains .. to end up selling fewer domains. So sure some will sell .. some even for high prices .. but when you look at the entirety of acquisition and holding costs vs the probabilities and amounts of potential sales .. then most of these domains are absolutely horrible investments. Thiink about it .. how many potential alternatives did the company have for $50? Thousands doesn't even begin to cover it .. as it's really an uncountably high number.


BTW .. do you still think an end user is right when their brand never gets any traction and the company goes bankrupt a year later because their marketing budget was burning away into thin air?

Yes from a domainer's perspective you still won and made money .. so there is that .. but that doesn't mean that the buyer was right to acquire the domain .. and just because there are a handful of such domains that sell at good prices each week, does not mean that building a portfolio of such domains is good investment strategy.

 

[Bob Hawkes]

I guess my main point is It is always worthwhile to look at what is selling. It is nice to have simple rules but the world of domains is not as simple, perhaps, as our rules.

 

[FolioTeam]

Some misspellings work for some names while for some others, not so much. Domainers tend to feel like an authority when it comes to branding when in fact, that isn't quite true in most cases.

Bottom line, is that the name sold because someone wanted it. It has and will always be about the customer

 

[equity78]

I wish I was allowed to reveal because it's such an unbelievable price, but a friend in the business told me about a sale last year, where they were just a conduit, the person was asking an astronomical amount, more than Thiink.com for a name that was a handreg, but they found the one buyer to give them their nearly $100,000 price. It was insane. So yes there are always outliers. You can't run a business on outlier strategy.

I think @Bob Hawkes when premium names were cheaper 15 years ago there was less of this. Price has become one of the biggest factors in these trends, no matter how much domainer's think they know best, like you pointed out. The corporate world does not care, even companies in the space, I remember once talking to someone at Verisign 12 years ago and saying .tv domainers are not going to like this, the quote back was, "No offense Raymond but we don't care what domain investors think."

If Fiver.com was available to register or acquire for $100 I believe they would have went that route but they couldn't/wouldn't so they went with Fiverr and that helped because here is a popular company using the misspell the extra r, going back before fiverr you can look at Digg, Flickr and Tumblr.

There are many names that fail the radio test and it's accentuated when there is a real company on the traditional spelling, like there is a company at Bloom.com, Blooom.com and Bloooom.com.

 

[garptrader]

One thing that we cannot overlook is the fact that most end users are relative newbies when it comes to domain selection. Someone who has been in industry for several years has looked at tens of thousands of expiring domains, made bid, renew or drop decisions thousands of times and seen hundreds of domain sales reports.

Imagine someone coming into a gym for the first time who has never been on any type of formal exercise program. They decide they don't want to pay $60/hour for an experienced personal trainer (most end users don't want to pay a premium price for a domain either) and randomly select a piece of equipment or hop on a cardio machine. How likely is it they are going to make good decisions as to exercise selection, training volume and intensity, and technique?

 

[bmugford]

I guess nowadays most of the ads are on the internet or in print-publications or on TV.

Are you guys still listening to the radio ?

I think that is taking it too literally. It is more the word of mouth test.

If you heard the website without seeing it in print or on a screen, would you know how to spell it?

The main benefit of these type of names are that they are normally available or cheap.
I am sure the vast majority of these end users would take the correct spelling all things being equal.

Anything can be branded with enough money and resources.

Brad

 

[equity78]

fiix.com 17,000 USD 2015-02-08 Uniregistry

Nice looking home repair website.

 

[DeliDomains]

Every domain name can be built into a big business if you know how and have the finances.
Unless we have the buyers viewpoint why he spent 50K for Thiink.com, all the discussions would lead nowhere.

 

[Bob Hawkes]

I can't think of a single reason to create a brand that will likely cause confusion

I don't think confusion is an advantage, either! I think though some of the branding types who are fond of double letters, especially vowels, like how it looks in type to answer one possible reason.

The radio test is one factor, but in a world where Google complete things for us, perhaps much less important than once was. Many famous brands like Kleenex and Lyft obviously have been successful despite the fact until they were known they would fail radio test. Thank you for your contribution.

Bob

 

[JB Lions]

The radio test makes a lot of sense, just because companies make some bad decisions doesn't change that.

BTW I think the end user is always right. They know their business and what aspect of the domain name is important to them.

Will disagree with that. I can think of a couple of big examples, Overstock.com, Rakuten.com. 2 companies spending advertising money trying to explain to consumers the name they chose, instead of what they're actually selling.

Overstock was trying to get the O, now make commercials telling people they don't actually sell overstock stuff. They could have simply chosen another name, rebrand. Just like Wayfair did, they used to be CSN Stores. I see commercials all the time for Wayfair now, focusing on their product, free shipping etc.

 

[biggie]

the double letters in words like thiink.com was a quick register and resell trend a couple of years ago
many of them sold for eyebrow raising prices
then came the chip craze
and many chips sold for "envelope busting, I can't believe it", prices

then came crypto and some of those burst the envelope too

then came cannabis, cbd, etc. and same thing has happened in that respect.

however, such misspells are the exception and not the rule, and continued usage of such terms depends on viability of the companies/services that adopts those names as brands.

additionally, such names are perceived to have closer connection with millennials, who for most part, don't take spelling words correctly, as seriously, as older generations did.
so, the marketing has to appeal to specific group and with such names failing the radio test, unless they are "spelled out" on the radio, then there will be confusion

as such, marketers will have to depend more on social media and tv ads promoting an app, more so than a website

now whether or not they succeed as a business, is another story.

imo...

 

[Recons.Com]

- radio test
- visually pleasing
- visually clean
- pronunciation clarity
- shortness
- positive meaning
- memorability
...

Ideally, you want all those to be perfect, but most names that can get great score in 4-6 of those, are great options for most companies, as 95% of business around the world rely on worse options and there is a limited supply of the ones that check the box for few at the same time.

So, yes, a name that fails at radio test, can be a great fit for a company that, probably doesn't rely much on radio ads or word of mouth anyway. If TV+Internet ads are 70%+ of your ad spend, then you should be fine. Radio ads can support your campaign, once the brand is established and you are just re-enforcing the message. You can also just spell out the name on radio, like "plenti" loyalty card was doing.

If you never had heard of Exxon, would you be able to pronounce it right the first time? Probably not. If you hear an Exxon ad on radio, do they have to spell it out or worry that people will misspell it? Probably not.

 

[Paul]

This might be besides the point, but, if I'm not mistaken, "ejemplos" is Spanish for "examples" and isn't a misspelling. It probably wouldn't fail the radio test were it on a Spanish radio station. I'm not particularly fluent in Spanish, but I've never heard another common Spanish word that sounds quite like that one. It's pronounced something like ay-HAYMP-lohs. The E's are a bit like English's long A's (hay, day, weigh), the J is like an English H (ham, hard, hat), the O is a long O (no, go, so), and the S is a hard S (sand, same, sauce). Accent is on the second syllable.

 

[equity78]

smiile.com 18,000 USD 2016-09-12 Sedo

A developed French website now.

 

[equity78]

wiise.com 18,000 USD 2018-05-14 Sedo

An accounting software company.

 

[Bob Hawkes]

BTW .. do you still think an end user is right when their brand never gets any traction and the company goes bankrupt a year later because their marketing budget was burning away into thin air?

I over stated it to make a point and stir up discussion ! Obviously as you point out they can and do make mistakes. My point was sometimes, well a lot, domainers act as though we are the ultimate knowledge source about branding, and we are not. I prefer to spend effort looking at the choices made, rather than saying they are wrong.

I think domains are important for many reasons. Yes sometimes someone being able to say a name and someone spell it matters. But many times that is not important, or is secondary to aspects like how it will look aesthetically. We can and have argued re Simplii rebranding, but if branding world is thinking that way we won't change it. BTW I perhaps should have explicitly said that.

Thanks for your, as always, well thought out and expressed contribution.

Bob

 

[DeliDomains]

So essentially; premium domains are meaningless if you have enough money to educate every consumer about what you're selling and why they need it.

I would not say premium domains are meaningless, but yes a lot can be achieved if you have enough money to educate. In context to thiink, it would not stand a chance in front of a fully developed think . com

 

[xynames]

No matter what you sell or offer for sale there will be detractors. Especially here at NP. So it’s best to just keep things to yourself not seek public input, especially not after the fact.

 

[Internet.Domains]

It is nice to have simple rules but the world of domains is not as simple, perhaps, as our rules.

Part of the fun of it.

Let the adventures begin.

 

[mr-x]

I wonder if lyft would buy lift.com if they could. Most of their service is from the app.

Marketing was easier because they were earlier in the market. Uber is a better name imo.