Month: April 2010

SocialSafeway.com: Success Story in Grassroots Marketing

Posted on by jbourne

After being closed for a year for renovation, the Safeway located at Wisconsin Ave. and 34th St. NW is re-opening its doors to local Georgetown and DC residents on May 6.

Thank God.  I’ve been living in DC for nearly 3 years, and Georgetown’s Safeway has been my local grocery store – with competitive prices, a convenient location, and a large parking lot, it was perfect.  Its closing has forced me to shop less conveniently elsewhere, namely at Whole Foods and Giant.  FairWinds’ headquarters is a stone’s-throw away from the store, and I look forward to having my grocery option back.

The store earned the affectionate nickname “Social Safeway” many years ago, because it has always been and will continue to be a place where locals are bound to run into someone they know.  Going grocery shopping is a social outing.

If you have driven past the renovation site, you have noticed the domain name “socialsafeway.com” on the banners demarcating the construction zone.  As a domain nerd, a smile immediately crossed my face the first time I saw it.  What better way to market the Web site and information hub for the neighborhood landmark than what everyone calls it?!

I was able to connect with Craig Muckle, Safeway’s Manager of Public Affairs and Government Relations, on the phone recently to get the scoop on the domain name and the store’s grand opening.  Having had local exposure to the store’s legacy, Muckle was among the brains behind “socialsafeway.com.”  Not surprisingly, Craig experienced some push-back from corporate Safeway, which did not appear to understand the benefit of the name.  This is because it bucked Safeway’s general naming convention, which would have yielded “georgetownsafeway.com” for this store’s domain.  Muckle knew that calling the Web site “socialsafeway.com” would secure the neighborhood’s support and appreciation, after having been “gone” for over a year.

This is a valuable lesson in naming.  Would local residents have direct navigated to “socialsafeway.com” without having been told to do so by the sign?  Probably not.  However, by offering “socialsafeway.com” and providing locals with a memorable, sentimental name, Safeway brilliantly and immediately connected with its shoppers.  While domain policies and naming conventions are certainly needed for consistency, which is inherently valuable, there are exceptions where such “grassroots marketing” is smart, and appreciated by local residents.

To the Naysayers

Posted on by jbourne

CADNA recently released a report that predicts how much new generic TLDs will cost brand owners once they are released.  A lot of the attention paid to the subject of new TLDs has been focused on .BRAND TLDs and whether or not companies should register their own branded TLD.  In my experience dealing with various businesses, there seems to be the impression that once a company decides it will not register its own .BRAND, it will be in the clear and new TLDs will not be much of an issue.  The truth is, generic TLDs like .MUSIC, .ECO and .NYC will actually be a greater concern for businesses in terms of defending their brands against infringement and cybersquatting.

After ICANN released its predictions regarding how many generic TLD applications it will receive in the initial round, CADNA went to work calculating how much brand owners on average will need to spend to defensively register their brands and trademarks across these new generic TLDs.  It found that the initial launch will cost brand owners about $500,000 each, and that the cost to businesses worldwide could exceed $746 million.  The full explanation of these figures and calculations can be viewed on the CADNA Web site.

CADNA, which many know is a nonprofit that FairWinds helped to found, undertook the task of figuring out the cost of new generic TLDs in order to give brand owners an accurate picture of what impact the TLD launch will have on their brands and their bottom lines.  CADNA put forward this research to help illustrate how absurd it is to allow such a radical shift in Web site naming to be a complete free-for-all.  New TLDs are probably a good idea – some day.  But, it is never a good idea to build on a shaky foundation.  ICANN is broken and anticybersquatting laws are outdated.  If it underwent necessary reforms to improve its policy development process and Internet governance function in order to make public interest a higher priority, then a rollout of new TLDs would look very different.  There wouldn’t be a massive flood of extensions that would create an impossible challenge for trademark holders and law enforcement to protect consumers from the misuse of brand names.

Unfortunately, since releasing its calculations, CADNA has experienced some negative backlash.  Interestingly the negative reactions came specifically from new TLD entrepreneurs blogging about the topic.  All those who called CADNA’s projections bogus and charged the organization with fear mongering are the same people who have a vested financial interest in the success of new TLDs.  Not one of those critics contacted CADNA to ask for comments or for a further explanation of the calculations and methodology.  Instead, they simply wrote off the figures because the results were inconvenient for them and their business.  What it boils down to is this: these critics are calling CADNA biased when they are clearly as far from neutral as they can be.