[wire] stone

Everything we know about domain name suffixes is going to change. Recent ruling by ICANN will allow the creation of custom names by companies and organizations (for a mere $185,000). So the era of .com and .net may give way to .coke and .apple and .hbo. In some ways this is the “High Street” of the Internet being created across down from the back alley of .xxx. There will also be generic names such as .banking and .hotels granted at the discretion of ICANN.

There are a lot of potential benefits here, particularly for companies that want to reinforce their brand. Of course, there are also some potential costly downsides when the litigation starts and trademark infringement gets nasty.

Everyone is predicting the rise of another whole set of companies and services looking to make money off of this. From the marketing guru to the domain resellers, every time we open a new channel we find ways to leverage it. I know that the SEO experts are already trying to figure this out.

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Earthquakes, floods, and tornados. It’s been a horrible year for natural disasters. In the context of these tragedies, please read the following post simply for the visual metaphor. In no way do we mean to trivialize or minimize the impact of recent events.

Ten years ago, we asked ourselves “Where’s the best place to be when a big storm looms on the horizon?” We asked ourselves this question because we held the belief that the impending “digital” storm could dramatically change the way global brands would be doing business.

We didn’t know what the future would look like – no one did – but we just felt it in our bones that we had to “become digital”. A decade of hindsight shows that we played our hand well.  We’ve successfully navigated two both the dotcom birth/bust AND the global economic crisis. How? Because 10 years ago we decided to re-think what it means to be an agency in the digital age…from how people consume media to how brands connect with people. (more…)