John Hughes
In failing to register these brand URLs, Egg have allowed a number of serious issues to arise.
Firstly, from a marketing point of view, it is common for users to second-guess domains, and many users may type eggpay.com or co.uk into their browser in the hope of finding the Egg service.
However, leaving marketing aside for one moment, Egg may have allowed a serious security issue to arise, in that these URLs could be used for illicit purposes, such as individual posing as Egg in order to persuade net users to supply their bank details, credit card details or similar.
As it happens, both www.eggpay.co.uk and www.eggpay.com have been registered and are in use, although not by any serious threat to peoples bank details in this instance.
The UK domain has been used by an individual who is keen to highlight the security lapse that not purchasing this domain may have caused. He also claims that he will, on request from Egg, surrender the domain to them. It is yet to be seen if this will happen.
The Com domain is owned by www.habitableplanet.com, who are abusing the domain currently, by using the Egg brand to direct traffic to their web design site. However, as this company is not a competitor to Egg, by any stretch of the imagination, currently, this will only serve to irritate Egg customers or potential customers that have been trying to get to Egg in the first place, and also will increase the bandwidth costs of Habitable Planet slightly, along with their cost-per-acquisition.
The fact that such a well-established online brand such as Egg has allowed this situation to develop illustrates that currently many companies operating on the web are unaware of threats that can be easily avoided, such as this. As the value of many online companies is made up of several units, one of the biggest of which is the value of their brand, the abuse and cheapening of the Egg brand in this way is very damaging to the company's virtual balance sheet.
The are other threats that can be equally dangerous to online brands, such as abuse of meta-tags, theft of logos, passing off, offer for sale of counterfeit goods etc.
Bigmouthmedia's online brand protection service brandintelligence, offers a cost-effective and thorough way of keeping a check on all online brand issues, included consultancy regarding action to be taken to protect new brands or brand launches.
For more information, contact info@bigmouthmedia. com.
