http://www.calvinayrelife.com:80/bodogs-brand-value-built-for-life.html
Calvin Ayre points out that I don’t know much about branding.. He’s probably right.. But I’m a quick study and you can learn a lot from a naive’ guy without preconceived notions. Calvin is rightly attached to his "Bodog" brand, it has made him very successful.. I suggested he use the loss of that domain name at the hands of a devious patent troll as an opportunity to rebrand, to turn lemons into lemonade.
I should have been more clear in my first post. Bodog (the word) never sounded particularly appealing to me.. It has no meaning and it’s kind of harsh sounding. Probably so because it contains the word "dog" — which is cool when you’re young and in school, but it doesn’t exude an Oceans 11, James Bond style, cool and sophistication like his own name: "Calvin Ayre" .. I think Calvin fails to realize that many of his users view him (not Bodog) as the brand.
It is his lifestyle that people are buying into when they place wagers at his house as opposed to some other operation, not the Bodog lifestyle.. "Men want to be like him, women want to be with him" .. Like Steve Wynn or Hef at Playboy.. it’s about Calvin. He’s the persona that makes that operation sizzle.
Calvin’s ability to shift between domain names "without a scratch" — his company’s ability to effortlessly keep the wagers flowing is more a result of his staff being able to email his database of existing gamblers (clients) to update them about the change and where to find the new casino door. No doubt, his people set gambling forums abuzz with links to the new site .. It is less about "bodoglife" being the positive result of some online remodeling effort. People need to know where to find you after all.. and if I was using Google I would have had a great deal of difficulty locating his site the day I wrote my post (it was not featured on the first page that day).
My suggestion of taking over a generic descriptive name such as onlinecasino.com is more as a brand booster.. (remember Calivin Ayre is the brand) He should think about the 100 or 200 organic visits which come to a valuable generic URL like onlinecasino.com each day, less like a brand, and more like rocket fuel to power his own brand and to deny other comers access to that category killer generic descriptive term and its type-in traffic. You are getting new bettors who might otherwise have found their way to a competing establishment by owning a generic descriptive term and the more of those you buy the harder it is to take your lights out and to compete against you on the Internet.
Johnson and Johnson don’t need to own baby.com to sell more pampers or shampoo.. Kay Jewelers don’t need to own gold.com to sell more jewelry ..but how much stronger would competing products be if they owned those names and used them to compete against the brands? I suggested Calvin take a page from J&J and Kay.
This quote illustrates my point: "Oddly enough, his blog post is an example of brand message distribution, which would not have been picked up by the search engines as quickly had there not been an easily identifiable brand."
That brand my friend.. is your first and last name of birth 
Interesting his Bodog TV brand is at:
http://tv.bodoglife.net/
Clearly you are both correct! The only difference is that when both you guys walked through the “internet door” one of you went to the left and the other went to the right. But, in the end both of your bank accounts reflect many commas between your numerals.
Frank, I will give you points for being diplomatic in your opinion. Calvin on the other hand was a bit less diplomatic, probably due to the crowd he runs in.
Mr. Ayre disappoints me with his cheap quips at you and the domaining business. References such as “this guy”, “armchair quarterback”, and “domain dudes”, speaks for his business manners and acumen. He is deriding a business that he is actually entering with his launching of their own registrar.
***FS*** No blood or hard feelings at all.. its his brand.. and he loves his brand. Natural reaction. But thanks for your support.
I disagreed with you on the branding – just because a generic sends traffic doesn’t mean its good as a brand. At the same time, J&J have built a secondary brand under baby.com – perhaps owning a good casino domain would do the same.
Regardless, I found the sheer condescending tone of the blog post rather vomit-inducing. Sure you can love your brand – and if someone attacks it, you should defend it. But a dismissive all-knowing tone is hardly the way to go at it.
And I say this as someone who disagrees with Franky rather regularly
***FS*** You do disagree with me quite a bit Ahmed.. and I still think the world of you.
…put simply…Calvin’s successful in spite of a very, very poor domain (thank goodness he knows enough to stick with .coms)…not because of it.
As Frank says, without his user database to notify his “customers” of where to find them…plus continuing press coverage…the loss of bodog.com might very well have left him dead in the water…
I’ll use the example Rick likes to use…Hotels.com…
…a great brand AND a great generic all in one…
You can’t beat that.
When he lost Bodog.com he had no choice but to use another domain. Whatever domain he was using previously, even if it had been a nice generic, would have been stripped of him regardless the way this whole thing played out in the courts. So I think the main point is, like he admitted, he should have held his own name in a trusted registrar off of US soil. He’s known the US has been after him for a long time, so it was quite an oversight to store his internet address in the US. Lucky he used a made up word like ‘Bodog’ for his site, because it was easy to find an alternative domain with Bodog in it. If he had used a generic ‘casino’ domain, good luck finding an alternative, because everything remotely useful with the word ‘casino’ in it has been regged long ago. I wonder how much damage would be caused to Google or Yahoo if they were stripped of their domains, and how long the turmoil would last?
What a shame he is too afraid to own a powerful, instinctive domain name for fear of it being stolen. Maybe he needs a new legal team, or maybe he should step down from his tower of power and take a hard look at what he is clearly missing.
If he moved his thinking process a little he would gain a lot of respect and could become an excellent supporter of the generic domain name. I think he forgets a name like online casino is already an instinctive, memorable and trusted brand – before the PR and IMC team hit the ground.
Nice going Frank, I think you rattled him a little. Bodog? wtf is that for a name, not a brand at all. Yes his customers might think different (they were shaped into the brand via experience no doubt, not the bloody name). It’s not all about your current clients, they would be just-as-happy on onlinecasino.com I am sure. How many new just-as-happy clients would he get day in day out from Google and direct navigation. Simply amazing to me, but you can tell by his blog and posts the guy is self absorbed.
Your other good point was the fact Bodog probably had an email database of users to notify about the change. That would save a lot of time and headache.
branding and generic names need not be either/or, but part of an integrated strategy –
“Companies do not have to put all their marketing eggs in one basket. Even companies with strong brand names can gain from diversifying their advertising channels with the additional of prime generic domains. They can invest in a blend of traditional media/print advertising, paid internet search advertising, and also prime generic direct navigation advertising. They can adjust investment of their marginal advertising dollars across the modalities to get the most bang for their buck overall.”
http://www.duckeggs.com/domains/
(disclosure: not my site, but contributed some top it)
Well, you can’t expect Tide to change their name to ‘detergent’, or Hersey to change it’s name to ‘chocolate bars’, or McDonald’s to change their name to ‘hamburgers’. But owning those generic domains could be a smart play for each of their companies. Owning the .com generic makes you look like the expert of the term, or at least there is the expection of it.
What was Calvin’s thougt process or logic when choosing BoDog.com …..or what was the catalyst for that choice ?
In the domain world Skenzo and GoDaddy seem to do well eventhough they have obscure names.
***FS*** How much better would they do with a bunch of generic names as support? If a guy like me can make a living selling traffic on the generics, then there’s an inefficiency.. if they owned those same names (the ones related to their core brand/biz), BAM .. fire in a bottle.