Re: Loyalty to Brand or Content

From: Ryan Gibson <ryan_at_kbitraining.com>
Date: Fri 11 Jan 2002 14:22:09 -0500

Branding from the Inside-Out! (Core concept Umbrella
Branding v.s. Stand Alone)

I have worked with a little known incubator in Vancouver
Canada that developed MailBank.com which later bacame
NetIdentity. The concept began when a few pioneers of
"the domain name" boom decided that domains where
worth money. Once they bought all of the domains, mainly
last names and hobbies, they realized that they needed to
make money from their idea. Renting yourname_at_yourlastname.com
email addresses and sub-domains such as
http://adam.smith.com and http://sara.smith.com as personal
websites became a revenue generator in 6-months. All of
these domains and concepts fit under one umbrella. The
clientelle came from people simply typing in their last
name and looking at what was there..

This company was a success and was sold to a group of
investor lead by Mark Cuban in late '99. After selling
40,000 domains off as part of "MailBank" the founders
created their own incubator with remaining domains such
as Quarterhorses.com, MarketMap, FreeView.com, and other
various concepts which involved several million in
private investment. None of the ideas materialized
accept FreeView, which was simply a great product and
idea...i.e. people talked about it.

It is very apparent now that the success of MailBank was
not just market branding, but the fact the Adam Smith was
so passionate about getting his name and email online
that he bought it and then told everyone in the family
they had to buy theirs too! An "Idea Virus." Like your
name_at_yahoo.com, yourname_at_hotmail.com, etc...free! Yahoo!
(Or maybe not that lucky for business model reasons.)

What is the moral of the story? The idea has a viral
effect that will catch-on and end up at your dining room
table conversation with the family and friends. If you
can manage to achieve this you will win the in the
"trend" stage of Brand development. Where companies like
the above story have failed is by aimlessly selling off
sections of their domain properties and not centralizing
them to a main concept, like Communicate.com. I believe
that "Umbrella Companies" like Yahoo and MSN have an eye
for "a potential virus" online.

I believe that over the long-run you can't loose-beacuase
you will reap the benefit of one concept being outrageously
successful and or the entire group having a critical "mass"
of value. Branding Internet.com's specific newsletters in
target markets and carrying the entire concept under one
umbrella is more valuable than selling off the pieces or
just building the individual pieces as "stand-alone" idea's
only. Dont' get me wrong, building "stand-alone" ideas is
important, but unless it has a connection to a strong
over-riding principle or an idea---it can quickly dissolve
into a trend or even worse "nothing at all." Sometimes
stand alones can survive turbulent times when they attach
themselves to Market Leaders, such as products that work
with MicroSoft, IBM, etc. However, Umbrella's have
diversity and flexibility that "Stand-alones" lack.

What if I created a part of a computer and when ever you
bought this computer on the "cover" or "box" it told you
and everyone who looked at the computer that "My hardware's
inside." (Pentium.) What type of computer do you have? PII,
PIII dinner table conversation. You'll get the odd, "I only
use Apple since 1975! Mines a MAC. But most of the
computerized world knows "what's inside" their brand
computer. But, based on your knowledge of the industry...in
your opinion is Pentium a stand alone idea or is it a stand
alone under an Umbrella? What's "Inside"? Branding from the
Inside-Out. Look at Pentium.com and let me now who you find...
it reminds me a little of how my friend Marshall Farris from
AscentaCapital.com found MailBank.com...he typed in
"Farris.com" and then "Farris.net." Guess who's Farris.net?

Sincerely,

Ryan Gibson
Director of Marketing and E-commerce
Ryan_at_kbitraining.com
Cell: 604-831-3400

www.KBItraining.com
The Complete Sales Action System



Received on Fri Jan 11 2002 - 13:22:09 CST