It is so easy to register a domain name that companies will often register a name for a single marketing campaign. So, for example, you might see a domain name appear called winthebestTVever.com that is used for a TV competition. But what happens to these domain names once the offer has expired? Well if you don’t keep an eye on your old domain names, they will be snapped up by people who might use them in a way that you might never imagine.
It was recently reported that Heinz suffered a very embarrassing PR episode when an old ketchup bottle went into circulation. It had a QR-Scan code pointing to a competition domain that Heinz thought had expired and was therefore no longer in use. One might think this was a reasonable assumption, unfortunately, it was not.
In fact, the expired domain name was bought by a less-than-scrupulous on-line business to high-jack the Heinz brand and drive traffic to their site, in this case an adult-only site. The result being the purchaser of the out of date competition bottle (it must be stressed the ketchup was perfectly okay and well within its sell-by date) received a very unpleasant surprise when he scanned the code expecting to enter a competition.
So what is the moral of the story? Make sure your domain names do not expire. You may never use them again, but the risk of PR damage is so great it is worth spending the small amount it costs to retain ownership.
