Innovative Domain Branding, a Coffee Company’s Success Story
Chris Ambler discussed a story he heard recently on a local Seattle morning radio show. The discussion was about Specialty Roast Coffee Company who donates $2 of every bag of coffee beans to a charity of the buyer’s choice. Coffee connoisseurs can visit SpecialtyRoast.com and select from a growing list of local and national charity foundations to donate to.
“We give away, on average, 20% of our gross. It’s counter-intuitive but we’re profitable, adds Warren Sly, founder. “Giving as generously as we do has been good for business. As Benjamin Franklin proved, you can live well by doing good.”
As the story goes the savvy businessman who owns the company has been purchasing additional domain names including the names of the charities followed by the word “coffee.” For example RedCrossCoffee.com, PetCoffee.com (Humane Society). The owner claims that this is one of his best ideas as it brings residual traffic to his business from type-ins. Customers tell their friends that they order their coffee beans at RedCrossCoffee.com and the power of word-of-mouth marketing sets in.
I can imagine that the idea of giving charitable donations can be applied to many products and services on the web. Domain names continue to be a powerful marketing tool. In a related article on DotSauce, Creative Marketing with Domain Names, we see that hundreds of large corporations are turning to domains that do not mention their company name at all to aid in promotion.
The Specialty Roast concept makes being a humanitarian quite easy and I hear the perks are good too.
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February 17th, 2009 at 4:18 pm
Very interesting story.. I recently bought a domain pertaining to coffee aswell.
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June 7th, 2009 at 11:08 am
Specific brand: A brand that defines itself narrowly and with detail. Examples include Starbucks, Ray-Ban, and Kleenex.
Vague brand: A brand that defines itself via characteristics, emotions, and broad strokes. Examples include IBM (the new IBM), National Geographic, and Disney.
As you develop your brand, try to think into the future to where you want to take it. I am not suggesting that you start off with a hard-to-control vague brand, but with proper planning, your move to a broader brand will be much simpler than if you try to do so with a specific brand.
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