Blackberry maker, Research In Motion (RIM), recently announced their sponsorship of the upcoming U2 world tour.  So naturally what would you do when planning a massive marketing campaign tied to a huge event like this?  You do what Godaddy did !  You register all sorts of domain names. Some to use but many simply for the sake of “brand protection”.

Granted RIM didn’t go as crazy as Godaddy did but U2 fan-site atU2.com tracked down 107 domains that the company registered this last week.

blackberryu2.com
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u2blackberry.com
u2blackberrytickets.com
u2rim.com
u2rimtickets.com
aboutblackberryu2.com
aboutblackberryu2tickets.com
aboutblackberryu2tix.com
aboutu2blackberry.com
aboutu2blackberrytickets.com
aboutu2blackberrytix.com
blackberryu2concert.com
blackberryu2concertdates.com
blackberryu2concertlisting.com
blackberryu2direct.com
blackberryu2forsale.com
blackberryu2listings.com
blackberryu2live.com
blackberryu2online.com
blackberryu2rock.com
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u2blackberrylive.com
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u2blackberrytourschedule.com
u2blackberryvipseats.com
vipblackberryu2.com
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wwwblackberryu2.com
wwwu2blackberry.com

As Matt McGee with AtU2.com points out  “I think, for the most part, this is a case of CYA — cover your ass.”  . . .   We agree that this may have been their thoughts. This type of defensive registration or brand protection is smart and we feel that there will be more of this going forward.

RIM appears to use the services of Corporate Services Company whose services include being the “single source to . . . protect brands”, but it appears they may need to do more due diligence in the domain name area.  Afterall, if you are trying to “CYA” with this degree of effort, you may not want to leave yourself exposed to your brand being tarnished by more obvious domain names.

Vulgar domain names that criticize a brand such as U2BlackberrySucks.com and F***U2Blackberry.com are much more common for disgruntled users or other naysayers to register.  They also tarnish a brand much more than a domain such as searchu2blackberrytourdates.com would ever do even in the “wrong hands”.

Both of the above example domains were available for registration at the time of this writing and could easily be registered by an unhappy RIM customer. RIM may have held back a little compared to Godaddy’s last brand protection effort, but the company still registered a fair amount of ridiculous names and may have left out some other domains that become crucial in protecting a brand.

Disclaimer – Author, Adam Strong, is one of the founders of the domain name consulting group DomainConsultant.com.

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