The story of a video
By Tony Kirsch
Head of Professional Services, Neustar
I want to tell you a story. The story of a video.
A video that started out with a specific vision, and grew into something else entirely – and in the process, became the perfect microcosm of our ever changing approach to .brands over the last few years.
As many of you will know, I’ve been really open in the past about how this journey has changed me, and how the success of .brands lies away from the traditional world of domain names.
I’d flirted with the idea of creating a video a number of times previously and it was never really the right time or other things kept getting in the way. Video is a fantastic medium, yet it’s not something that is generally easy to deliver unless you’re Gary Vaynerchuk sitting in the back of a cab.
But we’re super excited at the results and even more excited to share it with the public.
And for the investment of 2 mins of your time, you can take a look at what we see is the ‘Future for a Connected World’ by clicking on the video below.
Stick to the story (or not)
We’ve wanted to make a video like this for a while. But particularly in recent months, we’ve been continually refining and reviewing the story that we tell about .brands.
When you’re in an industry like this that is constantly shifting, it’s important that you learn to move with it. There is no point wasting your voice shouting the old message. The more we learn, the more our approach gets subtly modified and with each meeting we have, a new breadcrumb or idea appears.
So just like our video, we’re in a constant state of drafting and redrafting – looking to continue to evolve our purpose and strategy for the .brand community and digital marketers across the world.
Our approach
And as the conversations we have around .brands continue, that future-minded attitude becomes more and more important. So we decided now was the time to tell the story not only of what .brands are, but what they could be.
“It’s time to end the search and start connecting…..”
“Because when we find what we’re looking for, the search is over….”
These are really powerful messages that began to develop – which required us to refine the concept many, many times (causing significant frustration for the creative team of course!!)
Looking back at our first drafts of the script, what we initially thought this video was going to be is so far from where it ended up and like our clients’ websites, we had so much to say and so little space to say it in.
The importance of timing
Just like when we launched MakeWay.World, we knew the time was right – as the conversations we’re having with .brands are developing, the questions we’re being asked are changing, and the momentum we’re seeing in .brand launches is growing more and more by the day.
When we first started this it was all about transitioning your content to your .brand to build trust and recall with your customers. Whilst those messages still ring true, we spend more time today talking about consistency of message, linking people to the right places on your site and overcoming significant challenges such as the ever increasing costs for paid search.
Creating this video has been a cathartic experience. It has forced us to reflect; on where we’ve come from, where we’re at now and where we see this space going in the future.
More iterations to come
We recently published our first .brands Industry Report – a statistical and analytical look at the .brands space and some of its pioneers. This in itself wouldn’t have been possible even a few months ago – the story just wasn’t developed enough.
The more ‘data’ we gather, the more this will grow and evolve and the conversations we have will become more targeted, strategic and productive.
And inevitably, that means that our next video may have a slightly different story to tell.
Feedback, conversation and discussion is the fuel of this development and evolution. So I’d love to know – what do you think of the video? What resonates with you? What would you like to see in our next one?
Until then, we’ll keep drafting.
GoDaddy acquired Neustar's registry business as of August 3, 2020.
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