A future WikiLeaks document dump may or may not break Bank of America’s reputation, but words can definitely hurt it.
Hundreds of website addresses insulting the Charlotte, N.C., company’s chief executive Brian Moynihan and other top officials have been registered recently by MarkMonitor, a San Francisco firm that helps corporations protect their brands. Reached by BankThink, a spokeswoman for MarkMonitor would not say whether B of A is a customer, but the widespread (and logical) interpretation is that it is. (A spokesman for Bank of America wouldn’t discuss the matter.)
On Monday, in an item titled “Bank of America Wants You to Know Its Executives Don’t Suck,” the website Domain Name Wire noted that domains such as BrianMoynihanBlows.com and BrianMoynihanSucks.com had been registered, along with the .net and .org
Grabbing up embarrassing domains to protect a company’s brand is a common strategy, but registering them for individual executives is rare, the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal and several blogs said.
“Such defensive Web strategies are particularly important at a time when a corporate reputation can be sullied by a few clicks of a mouse,” the Journal noted, pointing out how a Twitter account was set up to
Bank of America has several reasons to be on the offensive, the FT said. The company has been at the center of the recent foreclosure documentation scandal and is the target of lawsuits by the Arizona and Nevada attorneys general. Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, has said it plans to release embarrassing documents about a major bank, which many
Not every potentially embarrassing domain name has been seized, the media and pop culture site Gawker.com reported. BrianMoynihanTotallySucks.org, BrianMoynihanIsJustTheWorstInMyOpinion.ly and BrianMoynihanKeepsLeavingTheToiletSeatUp.it are
Te Smith, a spokeswoman for MarkMonitor, told BankThink that registering domain names on behalf of companies is a big part of what it does.
“Often times the customer has a list of names that they absolutely want to manage and keep under management, and often we will consult with them as well in order to help them identify gaps in their portfolios or identify names of sites that might not be attracting as much traffic and therefore don’t need to be kept registered defensively,” Smith said.
Customers listed on MarkMonitor’s website include Comerica Bank, Sovereign Bank and UBS.
Can Bank of America succeed in preempting verbal attacks online? A commenter on Domain Name News said any motivated critic is “just gonna register soandsoreallysucks.com then reallyreallysucks. Adding content to any of the above will provide anyone with a beef the appropriate platform from which to broadcast their complaint.” A Gawker reader wrote that the strategy seemed “to be a case of a corporation just inherently misunderstanding the nature of the internet.”
