Consumers care about brands

The consumer world runs on brands. Household names are associated with products and services, not because of their dot or TLD, but because of the creative part that tags them.

Products and services are in turn familiar items due to relentless advertising, that generates familiarity with the name. It’s how it’s been done for more than 100 years.

Only in the last 20 years the need to append a “.com” to anything in sight became a habit, and a bad one. Brands continue to thrive without the extension, and those brands that became dependent on their TLD soon realized it’s an extra burden to carry.

Google is making a push to promote its brand of domain registrar, and it will succeed despite the higher prices over GoDaddy; the latter, is a familiar brand known to consumers thanks to controversial or otherwise effective advertising.

In the case of Google’s entry into the registrar world, to us domain investors it might be a silly move, considering the pricing. And that’s why Google will succeed; it possesses the footprint and the user base, and wraps its products rather well.

This is untapped territory for the new generation service companies, including brand consultants, marketers and new media specialists.

Uniregistry could easily take on Google and behemoth GoDaddy, if it drove enough traffic to its services to gain brand recognition. This is the era of breaking away from the conventional points of sale, using lightweight and dependable vendors.

Brands are everything consumers care about, and we are at a pivoting point that will emphasize and reinforce just that.