Mega shifts in global advertising, branding skills

Facts: The Internet was not invented to solve global naming complexities, but today it is right in the centre, with the most powerful domain name tools and options leading the charge.

Facts: There are some 100 top diluted names being shared by 100 million businesses around the world each chasing ownership dreams while being assured of some level of protection.

Facts: Domain name expansion is unstoppable, the global hunger for brand name visibility is irresistible and the clash of the two is now inevitable.

Facts: The combined annual global advertising expenditures mostly spent in pursuit of building name brands is about US$400bn.

Facts: The name identity is the most important and valuable component of a brand while a domain name is still the most undervalued and misunderstood component of the e-commerce.

Facts: The ICANN gTLD game is not just for everyone or for any business. It's a highly tactical device that needs the right housing to nurture it under a special agenda.

Facts: In the right combination, a gTLD dot name is the most economical tool for the fastest global name identity expansion, with the most maximum impact, ever.

Facts: Regardless where a DOT is placed in a domain name of any type or size it's a 'name' and therefore must conform to rules of corporate nomenclature and trademark laws.

Facts: Less than 2% of business executives have any significant level of depth to articulate on the dot name topic and lead their teams.

Facts: So far dot names are being driven by registries, registrars, domainers, lawyers and Icannistas, the absence of frontline marketers is creating a fog of war.

Facts: The booming trademark procedures and high costs of the centuries' old system are overly stretched, and now fear dot names as a possible alternate.

Facts: Based on the current trajectory, ICANN and global domain name expansion may become the alternate power house to global name identity protection issues.

Facts: Outside a very small percentage, most business names from last century cannot be stretched over the marketing canvas of global ecommerce.

Facts: Dictionary words, for the first time, acquire special 'generic brand protection power' as they will start to dominate cyber traffic flow as dot names.

Facts: The first round dictionary word generic dot names can be classified into three categories; Safe journeys, Bumpy roads, Lost in the jungle, winners and losers select their lanes.

Facts: The first round objection period didn't produce any dot brand name objections as anticipated from the get go, but opposition projected of sky falling.

Facts: The runaway success of few dozen dot names from the first 1,500 applications will encourage tenfold the number of new applicants in the next round.

Facts: The Facebook and Social Media strips the brand names as they appear as 'naked words' in social chit-chat. Facebook has yet to show a model for brand name expansion while shares fall.

Facts: Massive digitisation will further compress the old fashioned graphic campaigns into micro mobile name-centric messages, where brand name identity will be the single main differentiator.

Key Challenges

When new age rules of social media and domain name expansion are applied the global name branding management becomes ultra sophisticated. Trademark 'Clearance' House TMCH as it is currently being proposed by ICANN will not work. What new opportunities will it create for ad agencies and law firms? The highly creative-cum-technical designated team members of the future among other things must be expert on global naming complexities and trademark procedures. Most corporations are already confused or scared to face the possibilities of losing old their own names spanning decades. What are the new methods to capture new business for ad agencies? What are the new skills they have to develop quickly to capture the gTLD aftermarket boom? The generic dot names owners have the next hurdle of bidding and launching their 'billion dollar domain name babies'. The registries, registrars, domainers and nouveau domain rich players have tremendous new shared responsibilities to ensure fair games. What does all this mean to smart ad agencies?

The opposition from the advertising agencies of the world to ICANN gTLDs will fade away as the 1,000 dot names are launched, creating possibly million new smaller cyber brands. How to deal with aftermarket while the global marketing scene will turn upside down and remain as such for many years? New age wisdom will flourish as the worldwide future in marketing communications turns very intricate but equally very bright for the right skills.

Excerpted with permission from Metrostate Syndicate, from the book Image Supremacy by Naseem Javed www.imagesupremacy.com.