Businessweek.comjust publish an post entitled: “When Should Domain Names Match Company Names?”
The post is actually an answer to a question posed by a reader:
“When is it necessary or advisable for a startup to have a matching dot-com domain name?”
“What should take priority, the brand name or the domain name?”
The author went out and got some answers from “branding professionals” and here are a few:
“For most companies, achieving domain name alignment is not as important as coining a powerful brand name, says Jay Jurisich, chief executive at Zinzin, a naming agency in San Francisco. “Of course, everybody always wants an exact-match domain name, preferably dot-com. Unfortunately, the matching domain names for all single words and most compound names have already been registered, and buying one that is parked may cost you five or six figures,” Jurisich says.”
“Mike Carr, managing director at NameStormers in Austin, Tex., agrees. “Brand name and trademark hurdles are always more important than dot-com ownership; dot-coms are like license plates, brand names aren’t,” he writes in an e-mail. “With a dot-com, often you can just change one letter or add a short trailer and find yourself with an available URL that you can register for $15 if your preferred dot-com spelling is already taken.”
So now for George Tierney, creative director at Quantum Method, a Los Angeles marketing and communications agency who is quoted as saying:
“Slightly altering your brand name or adding an industry-specific modifier can create a good domain name.”
“Let’s say the company is Acme Toys.”
“You find that you can’t get acmetoys.com because someone has already purchased this domain name for the purposes of resale. Rather than pay a cybersquatter for the premium domain, he says, find a close alternative, such as acme-toys.com, or acmetoysco.com. “These alternatives will work just fine in the early days of your business. Once you have positive growth and budgets allow, you can go back and acquire the premium domain,” Tierney says.
Mr. Tierney is another guy who apparently thinks anyone who has a domain name “acquired for purposes of resale is a cybersquatter” even if they own “premium domains”.
Here is Mr. Tierney’s Linkedin Profile.
You can read the rest of the article here.
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Washington DC based FairWinds Partners 
