For Sale CIRA Marketing Update

[katherine]

If only Neustar would do as much as Cira to promote .us, that would be a huge improvement.

 

[ianccc]

Jeff:

It appears this campaign is ready for the rollout, and the 1,2,3,10 companies that are exclusively profiled to Canadians will think they won the lottery, So other than “look n see” there is not much that can be done to delay the CIRA marketing “enter word here” .

The campaign will roll out when?
Is it a National campaign for prime time TV?
It is directed to specifically to Trade publications and Conventions?
What is the expected outcome in terms of new registrations?

I remain strong on the opinion of a “Joe Canadian” approach but most folks here think a Business direction will prevail. So I guess we will al find out

BTW I know a particular “Fine Upstanding Canadian” that is available and would like to be one of the select few (lucky) to be paraded around Canada by the CIRA Marketing Machine

 

[DropWizard.com]

we look at dot-uk sometimes with considerable envy. Their penetration is insane.

It's the lack of restrictions. A position your current policies & ads will close off forever.

While I applaud the marketing campaign, and I'll hold my thoughts as to where the "H" has CIRA been all these years, here are some ideas/questions.

#1 Why is the get-your website opening each link in a separate window. That's ugly!
#2 Why are you using get-your when the unhyphenated version is owned privately ( and he just won the lottery) when a lot of the traffic will default to the getyour.ca site. This shows a basic lack of understanding on marketing on the web that apparently CIRA doesn't even understand itself!!! You need to own the singlular, plurals and hyphentated domains of anything you use for a national campaign. Surely you can do better?
#3 Just who the heck is this bladetape guy that he succeeds in getting himself announced by hockey night and CIRA. I need to hire him for our marketing!!

I also intend to post an idea for a marketing campaign that I think will be more effective in the long run. I just don't have time today to write it out.

 

[Jeff Rybak]

In reply to iancc - the campaign will be rolling out over a period of months. It's a long campaign that will extend into 2010. I don't have exact dates and wouldn't attempt to micromanage to that degree. No, it isn't on prime time television nationally. I'm sorry if you consider anything less than that inadequate. I mentioned all the media we'll be in in the initial post. Yes, I'll be following the metrics with interest (as will staff) but I'm not sure if there's a specific target for success. This is very new. I have no idea if there are additional opportunities to be profiled, but if you contact Shelia Bergeron ([email protected]) as the site indicates, it would be the apppopriate place to ask.

In reply to DropWizard.com - I have no idea why it's opening new windows for everything. That is annoying and poor design. The site isn't being advertised yet (to my knowledge) and I've seen a lot of changes already. It may not be in final form.

The choice of domains isn't my purview. I was asked about the ownership of the unhyphenated version in a private message. My answer then, as now, is that it's owned by one of the sprawling players in the dot-ca namespace and so it's really hard to avoid some people. There's no direct intention to benefit anyone here. In fact, I notice that the get-your.ca is now redirecting to getmyown.ca. I wonder if the whole thing isn't being rebranded that way. As I said, I started this discussion almost the moment I knew about this, so it's an early stage thing.

On a side note, I totally get your point about effective marketing, but I wouldn't say that CIRA's primary function is the monatization of domain names. Our primary competency is technical - in the running of the registry. So while I do agree with your point, I'm not sure it's quite as bad as CIRA not understanding itself. If CIRA was in the domain monitization business we wouldn't even release valuable names in the TBR - we would resell them ourselves. It's been suggested more than once, btw, though not by me. =)

I have no idea who the bladetape guy is. I agree, he's doing well in this bargain. But it certainly isn't nepotism. I think he's just got that spark of Canadianness that works well. What's more Canadian than hockey, after all? Maybe the next site featured will have something to do with poutine.

Suggestions and observations are welcome on this thread. It's getting read by more folks at CIRA than just me. I can promise you that.

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