GM: Rolls Out Its “May The Best Car Win” Campaign With Yamaha Motors Owning The .Com
Problem is MayTheBestCarWin.com isn’t owned by the new GM or the old GM for that matter, but by Yamaha Motors.
Although Yamaha doesn’t manufacture automobiles they do make golf carts, which is what they are marketing through their site.
So GM realizing that they couldn’t get maythebestcarwin.com, went ahead and registered TheBestCarWins.com on September 1st.
Nothing wrong with that domain, but knowing they didn’t have maythebestcarwin.com domain, why not just call their campaign “the Best Car Wins”? instead.
Why use a tag line when you don’t own the matching domain, rather than using a very similar tag line that you do own the domain?
And while we are on the subject, if GM had its heart set on “May the Best Car Win” it probably should have spent another $10 and register TheBestCarWin.com on September 1 as well, but they did not and someone else registered it yesterday and it resolves to a parked page.
Why should you care about all this?
The new GM is owned 60% by you, the US taxpayer.
Loading ...
LOL Mike …
The owner of http://governmentmotors.com/ should been on top of such news.
http://governmentelectric.com/ is still available for anyone that believes the
takeovers are not finished
Anthony
LOL, not a very good idea…but, on a positive note it could have been worse, like Honda owning it
I wonder how many hundreds of thousands they paid their advertising consultants to come up with that idea ??
Geez another case of free traffic going to the other guy.
Take a look at this. Have you guys seen the new short url service j.mp from bitly? Some genius pointed “j.mp/microsoft” to apple’s website
Tried the website, and none of the things that come up as “most popular” are even GM brands! It listed Toyota, Acura, BMW as being the top picks for all their stuff. Kinda sad. GM is almost paying to be humiliated…
This is a big reason why the U.S. will never be able to hold the #1 position in the world.
Most of the brightest folks who built this country were from the Great Generation. They are more or less gone now. The majority of the masses below them are dumbed-down and void personality, brains, and wit.
Quite happy to be Australian thanks. If only the World was as US centric as you guys believe, continually amazes me.
I am always stunned when these sorts of marketing screw-ups still happen, but in this case not so much. Here’s why…
Years ago, I worked for the ad agency of record for GM’s Canadian division and (being the in-house domain name expert at the ad agency) I would sometimes get involved in domain name strategy discussions with the folks at GM’s head office in the United States. I still remember the time I noticed a great “GM” branded .com domain name up for auction on TDNAM. This was a domain name that GM needed to own, and the folks at GM agreed. I immediately suggested to GM that they should bid on and purchase this valuable domain name.
At the time (and perhaps still to this day?) a lot of GM’s domain stuff was ‘managed’ by a well-known brand and domain management firm being paid a lot of money to stay on top of stuff like this. Not only had this firm not noticed this domain was up for auction, but they couldn’t even figure out how to buy it on TDNAM. Apparently this domain auction stuff was too complicated for them … LOL.
In the end, I ended up bidding on and obtaining the domain name, and eventually I got it into the hands of GM. I did this several other times afterwards, in fact, and to this day I still can’t figure out what value that expensive ‘domain management firm’ brought to the table.
So, as I said at the start of my post, this screw-up doesn’t surprise me too much. ;+)
Bill
I thought the same thing as well, but noticed the domain GM registered was very suprising done through Godaddy.com with privacy, and does not show any domain management firm on the whois record, as does GM.com
Also interesting to note that Godaddy is the registrar for the domain they missed, thebestcarwin.com, although they are not the registrant and also for the domain TheNewGM.com, which was registered last year at Godaddy.com and guess what?
GM doesn’t own that one either.
Talk about a car company being asleep at the wheel
These big corporations and their attorneys are absolutely clueless when it comes to using slogans without having the corresponding domain name. for example, I own ItsTheMoneyYouCouldBeSaving.com, GEICO doesn’t.
Hi there, I found your blog via Google while searching and your post looks very interesting for me.
There is obviously a lot to know about this. I think you made some good points in Features also.
I purchased http://www.maythebestcarwin.org but it seems that the program has already lost much of the consumer buzz.
Brian
I see GM has a trademark symbol on the TV commercial for “may the best car win” even though its doesn’t own the .com
I saw that too on the video but you will notice that it is not on their official website or press releases. I doubt that they can trademark a phrase that has been in the public domain….but in any case the program is already dying on the vine.
well.. it’s like I thought!