Fox New York ran a story tonight on the upcoming .sucks extension, the new gtld has gotten a lot of mainstream coverage over the last couple days. In addition to the TV, Fox had a story on their website.
From the article:
But a lot of people, including marketing and branding expert Adam Hanft, aren’t buying that. He says people who buy a dot-sucks domain will do it to attack someone else, not build their own brand.
One marketing blog warned: watch out brands. Another called it a brand’s worst nightmare.
On the one hand, anyone could create a website attacking a brand and call it, for example, walmart.sucks or pepsi.sucks. On the other, companies can prevent that — for a hefty price.
Mark Spoonauer is the editor in chief of Tom’s Guide and Laptop Mag. He called it a kind of extortion masquerading as advocacy.
Here is a cartoon I made in 2011