The Costly Game for Net Names

Icebox.com doesn’t sell refrigerators and Monster.com isn’t necessarily a scary place to visit. But getmymba.com is pitching exactly what the Web site’s name suggests.

The Internet is a confusing place for consumers scrambling to distinguish between such like-sounding names as vitamin.com and vitamins.com. The mental gymnastics needed to reach a desired Web site also are complicated by entrepreneurs who hope that adding an ‘e’ or ‘i’ to their Web site’s name will make it sound high-tech.

What’s in a name? Lots of money, for one thing. Companies such as Pasadena-based Idealab will pay $1 million for names that can significantly reduce the cost of advertising a new Web site. Marketvision claims to have “turned the process of incubating Internet companies upside down.” The Boston-based firm’s game plan: Secure domain names first, then develop appropriate businesses around them.

Names don’t last long on the e-commerce market. Most of the obvious names have been taken, either by online companies or entrepreneurs hoping to sell the names to online start-ups. E-buy.com and E-sell.com are gone, as are E-tail.com and I-tail.com. Ready to say enough.com? Too late--it’s already gone.

More than 1.5 million new domain names were registered during the fourth quarter of 1999 alone, and industry observers say the number of online addresses eventually could swell to 160 million.

The rush has made Network Solutions, the Herndon, Va., company that has acted as the registrar for online names, a hot property in itself. Verisign Inc. acquired Network Solutions last month in a deal valued at $17 billion. Network Solutions has already registered more than 9 million names ending in such “generic top-level domains” as .com. The name game could explode if a proposal to add domains as .firm, .store, .law and .arts are added.

Pasadena-based Idealab last week upped the ante by agreeing to pay the South Pacific island nation of Tuvalu (pronounced too-VAH-loo) $50 million in royalties over the next decade for rights to e-mail and Web addresses ending in “.tv,” the country code assigned to Tuvalu. Idealab hopes to resell addresses for hundreds of millions and perhaps billions of dollars.

Such possibilities are prompted by a hectic search for names that consumers will remember. Whether it’s online or along a grocery store aisle, “names are supposed to communicate who and what you are,” said Sergio Zyman, the former top advertising executive at Coca-Cola Co. “The name is what makes someone want to buy you.”

The right online brand name can dramatically increase the value of a Web site. In the real world, 59% of Coca-Cola Co.’s market value--$111 billion--is driven by the value of the world’s best-known brand, according to a study by Interbrand, a New York-based corporate identity firm.

“Your brand name is your 800 number, your address, your marketing call to action, and if consumers can’t remember how to spell it, or the name is too generic, it’s going to make a huge difference,” said Jake Winebaum, a former Disney Co. executive and co-founder of eCompanies, the Santa Monica-based e-commerce incubator firm that in November agreed to pay $7.5 million in stock and cash to a Texas entrepreneur for the business.com domain name.

Lee Iacocca knows the value of a solid name in the online marketing world. The former automotive industry executive sells electric bikes at his Ebike.com Web site. Why isn’t he using LeeIacocca.com? “I found out that some kid in Texas already owns it--owns me,” Iacocca said. “It’s tough to get the attention of the public without an easily identifiable marketing tool.”

Three broad strategies have developed among online companies hoping to build brand awareness.

Business.com is betting that a straightforward name will telegraph its down-to-business orientation. Huntington Beach-based ohgolly.com hopes to replicate Amazon.com’s success in turning a non sequitur into a household word. eToys.com in Santa Monica is among those sites betting that an ‘e’ or ‘i’ will signal an e-commerce or Internet heritage.

Each of the naming strategies boasts strengths and weaknesses.

Some companies undoubtedly will get lost as entrepreneurs line up to buy vowels. More than 70,000 ‘e-’ and ‘i-’ domain names already have been registered, according to Network Solutions. “We call it the ‘ei, ei, oh no syndrome,’ ” quips Noah Mandrake, a Los Angeles-based principal with the Siegelgale Inc. consulting firm.

“Some of these people are so fixated on trying to get e- or i- into their names that they don’t stop to think about what a name should mean,” said Zyman, who recently formed an online consulting firm called MarketingMarketing.com.

Names beginning with “e” and “i” or such tech-sounding words as “net” and “micro” could grow dull over time, marketers say. “Saying you’re part of the Internet could date you the way people think of all that lime-green carpet from the 1970s,” said Julie Cottineau, naming director for Interbrand. “Pretty soon it will be understood that everyone does business on the Internet.”

Such names as getmymba.com--a site operated by Jones International University--have the advantage of telling consumers exactly what to expect. “If you’re called beyond.com, you have to get people to figure out what space beyond.com occupies,” said David A. Aaker, vice chairman of Prophet Brand Strategy, a consulting firm, and an author of books on brand leadership.

The downside of what-you-see-is-what-you-get names is that many sound alike. Firms with similar names, say pets.com, petopia.com and petsmart.com, must advertise heavily to create name recognition. Narrow names also carry another danger. “If Amazon.com had picked books.com, they’d probably be in great shape to sell lots of books,” Aaker said. “But if books.com wants to expand, they might not be able to.”

Following in the mouse clicks of Amazon.com or Yahoo, two competitors that built strong brand awareness around non sequiturs, also could be dangerous. “Those were early arrivals with superior business models,” said Kevin Walker, co-founder of Boardwalk, a Pasadena-based branding and design firm. “There’s so much clutter out there now you’d really have to have a huge marketing budget to get people to remember who you are.”

As they scramble to differentiate themselves, online companies are looking everywhere for memorable domain names. Oxygen.com and Hydrogen.com turned to the periodic table. Santa Monica-based Icebox.com, which is screening online animated entertainment, considered the Swahili word for “change”--mageuko--before paying a Colorado businessman an undisclosed amount for the Icebox name.

Steve Papermaster, co-founder and chief executive of Agillion.com found his dot-com’s name on “the white board at about 2 a.m.” during a branding strategy session at the company’s Austin, Texas, headquarters.

Agillion.com’s name represents a twist on jillion, a real word that means an indeterminately large number. The Web site promises to help businesses deal with “agillion things they all have to do,” Papermaster said. “The real beauty of Agillion is that it’s a made-up word--and we own it free and clear.”

Rights to use most words in the English language, including jillion, long ago were grabbed by businesses or entrepreneurs who are using them--or hope to parlay them into a profit, such as eCompanies did. The deal raised eyebrows in marketing circles, but Winebaum defends the price tag.

“It’s the equivalent of what some people paid for a few Super Bowl commercials,” Winebaum said. “But what do they have after the game’s over? With business.com, 85% of the brand-building is already done.”

Icebox.com views its domain name as cool--pun intended. But co-founder Howard Gordon acknowledges that the Web site’s content will drive the company’s success. “Ultimately, we have to create a brand on the strength of content,” Gordon said. “It’s up to consumers, but we believe that Icebox will hold cool stuff.”

Brand-builders agree that a company’s name is just the first step in the journey toward brand awareness. “It’s the first public act of branding,” Cottineau said. “The name carries an even heavier burden online when it comes to communicating the emotional and experiential benefits of a brand. Online, everything I know or feel about a brand is going to be communicated by the name.”

Zyman advises customers to stick with names that have meaning. He recently advised Sunnyvale-based Pointment.com, an online human resources provider, to change its name to Employeelife.com. Allrecipes.com was considering changing its name because it was too limiting, Zyman said. “I asked, what’s limiting? That name says it all.”

Sometimes, dot-coms that rushed the naming process have to back up and start over.

Computerliteracy.com recently changed its name after surveys showed that the original name was misleading. The Santa Clara-based business-to-business bookseller’s new name: Fatbrain.com.

Some of the company’s employees threatened to quit if the new name was adopted--and some customers said they’d probably sever their business relationship. Dissension largely evaporated when the company’s share price unexpectedly doubled in the wake of positive reports about the change.

“We’re in what I call the Paleolithic era in online naming,” Mandrake said. “I’d like to be a fly on the wall in a history class in 100 years when someone tries to make sense of all of this.”