Some of the first “use cases” by Dot Brands have simply added Home in front of their Dot Brand and redirected existing home page content or replicated content in other traditional country codes or Dot Com. A few of the more notable ones include Home.Barclays or Home.Cern, Home.Travelers and Home.Redumbrella. Many of the reported “use cases” simply redirect back to an older Dot Com page buried behind a series of backslashes, such as disruptaging.aarp, inside.chanel, learn,cisco, search.bing, and bba.bloomberg. While it is certainly exciting to see the Dot Brand live and in use and I share the enthusiasm for companies doing something, I fear in the long-term ineffective use like this will do more harm than good because it doesn’t fit with any long-range digital strategy.
Read MoreThe Dot Brand must be CREATING a better user experience or solving an existing problem to support the long term value and return on investment. It must be original and exclusive (as in not also showing up in country codes and dot com and actually promoted to consumers). Otherwise, what’s the point? Redirects of a Home.Brand or replication of content will not get any CMO excited about the future and could ultimately spell doom for that company’s effort in the Dot Brand space. The cost of operating the Dot Brand is significantly higher than simply renewing an inexpensive Dot Com every year. If you don’t use it for something more meaningful, strategic and in a way you measure success and impact on the business, ultimately senior executives will question why so much money and company resources are being invested to simply redirect, set up a landing page or replicate what already existed. And, no consumer is going to get overly excited about a Home.DotBrand or a redirect of which they aren’t even aware...
