A simple question every .brand applicant ought to ask their consultant today

With deadline looming for partial refund, now is the time for TLD applicants to do a gut check.

They aren’t quite dropping like flies, but .brand top level domain applicants are starting to pull out.

GM is withdrawing all of its bids. Hasbro is gone. Eli Lilly pulled one of its drug names.

Suddenly, I suspect a lot of brand owners will rethink their decision to apply for a fresh top level domain — especially those beyond their core brand.

Although GM gave a general reason for withdrawing its applications, there’s a rather simple question every .brand applicant ought to ask the consultant that talked them into applying for a domain in the first place:

“What’s one thing I’ll be able to do with this TLD that I can’t do with my existing .com domain?”

I have yet to hear a single good answer to this question.

Like I’ve stated over and over, it’s possible that there’s a good answer and people are keeping innovative ideas close to the chest. And if your consultant can give one to you, by all means carry on.

Otherwise, you ought to seriously consider the value of your application.

In GM’s case it would be rather silly to manage all of these top level domains for their brands. It’s probably hard enough to manage all of their second level domains for each brand. Creating top level domains would not eliminate the need for those second levels they by now have.

Cadillac.com isn’t going away anytime soon.