According to the New York Times, Mark Cuban purchased Democracy.com – The NYT reported that Mark Cuban purchased the domain name: “to make sure someone didn’t do something crazy with it.”
In South Africa (and Africa in general) small business does not pay proper attention to BRANDING. Yet, a brand name is probably one of the very important factors (if not the most important factor) that detirmine the success or failure of any and all business ventures.
Recently there was a discussion on the Australian chat series, GRUEN, about how Disney adds value to it’s singular brand by adding the generic word “plus” to the end of it’s brand. Disney creates additional products and services whilst still using their main brand name as this means that the costs, of developing a new and separate brand for whatever new product or service combination Disney wishes to offer, is saved.
The South African domain name space, the “co.za” namespace will soon have 2 million registered domain names. Yet, small business does not develop and use their brand as they should. You will find that Example Plumbers has registered example.co.za – but then on their business cards and vehicles they market example@gmail.com
Many South African small business seems to simply not understand branding. they seem to be ignorant about the importance of branding and developing, promoting and using their own brand name.
Even free advertising guide websites, like Advertises.co.za (which offers a free marketing step by step system and a lot of “branding” type advice and recommendations) are not that well supported.