Firms Rush to Add '.com' to Names, But Consultants Aren't Enthusiastic
By KARA SWISHER
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Are you anybody unless you're somebody.com?
As 1999 dawns, more and more companies have decided that adding the
Web address to the end of their names might lend a bit of the magic
enjoyed by such Internet highfliers as Amazon.com Inc., the online book,
music and video retailer whose stock has gone stratospheric.
But while a company's stock may enjoy a quick uptick and its trendiness
factor could surge just by appending the ".com" suffix, branding consultants
warn against the move.
"Would you add the word 'shopping mall' or 'drive-through' just because
you operated that way?" asks Allen Adamson, managing director of the
New York office of Landor Associates, a corporate-identity firm. "It might
sizzle now, but fizzle later."
Nonetheless, in the past month alone nearly a dozen companies have
availed themselves of the instant image makeover. Among them:
Software.net Corp. of Sunnyvale, Calif,. became Beyond.com Corp., the
name under which it has been doing business since Aug. 25, when the
online software retailer revamped its Web site; California Pro Sports Inc.
of Greer, S.C., formerly a sporting-goods distributor, changed the name of
its operating subsidiary to ImaginOn.com after it agreed to merge with
ImaginOn Inc., a San Carlos, Calif., software maker; and Spectrum
Information Technologies Inc., a Purchase, N.Y., Internet software
developer and marketer, became Siti-Sites.com Inc.
Also, Axxess Inc. of Altamonte Springs, Fla., became Financialweb.com
Inc. to "more accurately reflect the company's core business" of financially
oriented Web sites, and Technology Horizons Corp., Garden City, N.Y.,
has turned into CDKnet.com Inc.
Flagging Customers
Mark Breier, president and chief executive of Beyond.com, says he felt the
Web address in the company's name was critical to flag customers that the
business was about the Internet. In addition, it cleared up the longtime
confusion with another Web company, Software.com.
"Beyond.com was inspirational and suggested a promise to our customers
that we will deliver 'beyond their expectations,' " says Mr. Breier, who, in
fact, used to be a top executive at Amazon. "And it's an optimistic name."
Indeed, helped by a national advertising campaign, Beyond.com shares are
now trading at around $22 after slumping as low as $6 during an overall
market slump in mid-October.
That's the kind of jump Tony Interdonato, chief executive of Tman
Global.com, is hoping to get for his martial-arts company, which trades
over the counter. Adding a ".com" to the name, he says, was the best way
to indicate that the primary focus of the business had become
Internet-based, after the former FSGI Corp. of Atlanta merged with
Martial Arts Network On-Line Inc.
"Every company out there has a Web site these days, even if they are not
in an Internet-related business, so we wanted to give our clients and
investors a more clear indication of what we were," Mr. Interdonato says.
"It's probably going to become more and more commonplace in order to
distinguish between those companies that operate in the real world and
those that operate in the virtual world."
Caution Is Urged
But not everyone thinks the cattle-rush of companies branding a ".com" on
the end of their corporate monikers to take advantage of the current mania
for all things related to the Internet is such a good idea.
"A big part of a brand name is as a differentiator, and you can't be different
if everyone has your name, as .com becomes more and more
commonplace," says Mr. Adamson of Landor Associates, the
corporate-identity firm. "Branding based on distribution is never a
long-term play."
Instead, he urges businesses that hire Landor to think much further ahead.
"A company name is something that a business has to live in for 15 years
or more, so I ask clients what business they want to be in then," says Mr.
Adamson, who notes there are a lot of other tactical ways to indicate that
your business is Internet related, such as direct marketing and public
relations. "Any sort of transient element -- even if it gives your stock a
temporary spin -- is a bad idea. It might work for the first few companies
that are on the bandwagon, but No. 7, No. 8 or No. 9 are in trouble."
That is one of the reasons that a start-up in Santa Clara, Calif., didn't
consider a .com name in its recent contest on the Web to garner a new
identity. The "Company Formerly Known As Cad.Lab," a 3-D-software
developer, sponsored a $50,000 contest online to find a new company
name, attracting more than 4,000 people (including 22 competitors) who
offered more than 40,000 names.
While there were 58 entries with the Web e-mail helper "@," 15 ideas that
spelled Cad.Lab backwards and some silly entries (including "Finger
Lickin' Cad," "Cadaver" and "Macroni & Cheese"), the company selected
Think3, suggested by Fabio Orsi of Italy.
"We didn't get many entries with .com," said Think3's spokeswoman, Lisa
Washington. "But we wouldn't have used it, since we wanted to make sure
we were not being faddish. We wanted a name that was meaningful and
true, so .com wasn't even a consideration."
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