Am I exceeding my franchise this issue?
Is the .biz ad chosen for making over this month really a direct response ad? And if it isn’t, how come I’m picking on it?
Well, I have to admit that it’s not clearly a direct response ad. It doesn’t really ask the reader to do anything.
So that raises the question, what’s the point? I’ll swear that sometimes the point of such advertisers is simply to do advertising.
Let’s say the CEO is having breakfast with her mate and he says, “Honey, how come your company isn’t doing any advertising? I was talking with Charlie over the back fence yesterday and he says his wife’s company does advertising all the time.”
(I’m getting into hot water here in an effort to be politically correct. I thought I’d make my hypothetical CEO a woman to avoid gender prejudice, but now some readers will probably complain that I’m making the CEO look like she’s stupid because she’s a woman. I can only say that God granted both men and women executives equal opportunities to be dumb when it comes to advertising.)
So the CEO goes to the office and says “Let’s do some advertising.”
“What for?”
“What do you mean, what for? So we’ll have advertising, like everybody else.”
And so an ad as born, perhaps not unlike the .biz ad shown here. It toils not, neither does it spin. It just is.
This one shows an airliner with a bracket running end to end above it, and the words “The Internet” above the bracket. A smaller bracket spans the front of the plane, labeled “.biz.”
In small caps at the bottom is the copy in its entirety:
Introducing .biz — Finally there’s an Internet domain built for the needs of businesses of all sizes, all around the world. Consider it a well-deserved upgrade. www.neulevel.biz
Now there’s a clue. The signature is a URL (www.neulevel.biz). Sounds like .biz would like interested parties to pay a call. We call that direct response advertising, folks. But as long as you’re going to take the trouble and spend the money to advertise, why design the ad to minimize response rather than maximize it?
Doing a little research at the .biz site and other places on the Internet, I managed to ferret out the story. Seems that ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) has decided that the existing domains — those letters like “com” and “org” that you see after the first dot in a URL — are getting a little crowded. So they’ve decided to allow the formation of some new ones. And these folks have staked a claim for one devoted entirely to businesses — “.biz.”
So far .biz has received 2.4 million applications, a nice round number. I’m sure they didn’t generate all that interest with ads like these.
So why should a business be interested? Well, maybe some scheming operator has already registered your most likely dot-com name and is refusing to sell it you for anything less than a king’s ransom. Maybe a competitor got there first. Maybe there are a number of non-business dot-com sites with URLs that sound like your kind of business and confuse people.
So, here’s your chance to have your own business URL that accurately reflects your name and business nature.
Then why doesn’t the ad explain all this? That’s what I’ve tried to do in my makeover.
I’ve retained the metaphor comparing the superiority of this domain name to the superiority of business class over coach, but I’ve spelled it out clearly. “Why fight with a horde of other dot-coms for a seat in coach?” promises a kind of snob-appeal benefit.
The boldface lead-in line, “Do more business with .biz after your name” offers another benefit. And the copy presents an appeal to find out more.
Now the advertising doesn’t just sit there admiring itself. It serves a purpose by seeking to establish contact with more companies interested in signing up, as well as reinforcing the decision of those that have already applied. Is that bad?
THOMAS L. COLLINS was co-founder and first creative director of Rapp & Collins and is co-author with Stan Rapp of four books on marketing. He is currently an independent marketing consultant and copywriter.
To send your comments, opinions or suggestions, e-mail me at tomlyle@rcn.com. Or send snail mail to 424 West End Ave., #11-B, New York, NY 10024.
