McDonald’s has a program called the Moms Quality Correspondents. The program, started in 2007, is part of Micky D’s “See What We’re Made Of” campaign, and takes a team of six real moms behind the scenes of the company’s operations.

The Moms hit the farm fields, get behind the counters, and visit Ronald McDonald House charities. They ask questions and act as investigative reporters. Then, they report back in their own words on the Moms Quality Correspondents website.

Now that every fast food restaurant has a dollar menu, the new battleground for these chains is value. Customers want lower prices, but they don’t want lower food quality.

Who better to ensure quality than real moms who care what their families eat?

The Moms also give McDonald’s transparency. By lifting the curtain, McDonald’s builds customer trust and defuses some of the negative press from a film like Super Size Me.

Twitter This

Username: Password:

Are .net and .biz not doing enough to spice up your URL? Get ready for a slew of (dot) options.

A recent article in Advertising Age points to the proposed expansion of generic top-level domains.

Generic top-level domains (gTLDs) are the short words that follow the dot in a web address, such as .gov or .edu. There are 21 gTLDs, with .com, .net, and .org capping about 91% of all websites.

A proposed expansion of these domains could add hundreds more to the mix.

The expansion would allow companies to supplement  their .com TLD with more descriptive, on-brand TLDs. For example: John Deere could use “JohnDeere.tractor,” “JohnDeere.mower,” and “JohnDeere.green,” among other options.

Who’s proposing this expansion? A nonprofit agency, the Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which has a Joint Project Agreement with the US Department of Commerce. ICANN believes that opening up new TLDs would increase innovation and competition in the domain name market. And, though .coms aren’t running out, the space is crowded.

The expansion has its downsides. Mainly, it’s expensive.

Registering a top-level domain name is significantly more involved than registering a domain. When applying for a TLD, you’re applying to run an entire registry. A registry is a business, just like .com or .net, and that doesn’t come cheaply.

The application fee for a TLD is $185,000. Plus annual fees that range anywhere from $25,000 to $75,000. That’s a lot of money, especially for companies pushed to snatch up several brand-related TLDs.

What’s more, if two companies wanted the same name, the name would be auctioned off to the highest bidder.

The battles between Coke and Pepsi, or McDonald’s and Burger King would undoubtedly be epic. No wonder the expansion has caused trademark holders some concern.

Its these concerns, according to ICANN’s March 7th news release, that have kept the proposed expansion from, as of yet, going through. But that doesn’t mean it won’t.

So it’s best to be prepared. Marketers, eager to put their clients’ brands in sticky new places, should get ready to rumble.

Twitter This

Username: Password: