Radio test for a domain #Fail

wonder_lander · Nov 29, 2018

I was in the car the other day and heard an advert on the radio for iwoca.co.uk - which the advert has to spell out at the end!

It's fine wanting a brandable name but it seems mad to choose something that you have to spell out in the few precious seconds you get on a radio advert!

Pierre Barnard · Nov 29, 2018

100% agree.

RobM · Nov 29, 2018

Yeah it always amazes me how people are happy to spend thousands or tens of thousands per year on radio/tv advertising yet when it comes to a domain for their business they have the idea that they should get it for £10.

dee · Nov 29, 2018

The site is for business loans aswell so you'd be throwing large sums to make a dent in that market.

Did they pronounce it as a word " eye - wocka " for example and then spell it , or just spell it out ?

wonder_lander · Nov 29, 2018

Pronounced like you say and then spelt out at the end "that's i-w-o-c-a.co.uk"

Adam H · Nov 29, 2018

At least they had the sense to register the alternative "k" version instead of "c" lol.

timter51 · Nov 29, 2018

Jesus... that is a genuinely awful brand name.

keys · Nov 29, 2018

It strikes me as a little bizarre that they have .com and forward to co.uk, more sense to use .uk if they want to target UK market.

Judging by the amount of uninvited postal offers received from them, they must spend a fortune on marketing.

lazarus · Nov 29, 2018

I heard one the other day that had a "2" in it and the guy in the ad had to say
www. Blah Blah 2 "That's the number 2" Blah .co.uk

It was such an ugly fail.

donton · Nov 29, 2018

I'm probably in the minority who doesn't think iwoca is too bad. I mean it's not ideal, but it's kind of a blend of 'instant working capital'. For me, it works.

My personal favourite for failing the radio test is boxt.co.uk

These guys advertise on the radio quite heavily atm. When they say it, it's not entirely clear what the domain is but I assumed boxed.co.uk...

They do spell it out. But my word, it's an absolutely horrid name imo.

lazarus · Nov 29, 2018

That extra 5 seconds it takes to spell it out X times of air time their ad is played. Would have saved them enough to buy a decent domain name.

crabfoot · Nov 29, 2018

Yright - get the Village People singing "It's fun to fund from the i dubya o c a"

They could have picked something relevant, like CarolinaDoorServicing.it

getmein · Nov 30, 2018

I think the strategy of picking a weird and wonderful name, which you can TM and which you can hopefully rank for is a good one in an age where outside of brands, every generic keyword is up for grabs. Childcare.co.uk get it right with both paid and organic listings - but imagine the same battle for screenshare on a term like car insurance if you owned the corresponding .co.uk - you'd likely drown in the competition, thats if you could even get there in the first place.

The radio test point is valid - but I suspect when a lot of these name choices are made the people choosing the name can't anticipate a time where they will need to go offline to find additional volumes of customers or generate leads at an acceptable price.

Names that tick all the boxes are rare. Which makes me very bullish medium term about the highest quality single word names which have great flexibility on usage. I still remember thinking that very.co.uk was an unusual choice at the time, but now reflect that it's a great choice.

diablo · Nov 30, 2018

Big problem with made up names is recall. Everyone knows Sarah Beeny. Most people know she has an online estate agency. It's advertised all the time on TV. But how many people can recall its name and of those how many can spell it?

As RobM says, amazing how much a company will spend on advertising and so little on a brand name / domain name.

crabfoot · Dec 1, 2018

Yright - I don't watch much TV, so I don't know who Sarah Beeny is. No problem, I don't know who is chairman of the Bank of England, even if it is written on every fiver I spend.

Sometimes advertising does not hit the intended target, achieve the objective - Skeletor saved money somewhere and I'm avoiding that site because they don't tell me how a dancing cartoon can help ME save money.

An aeroplane crashed at Munich airport in 1958 and people died. Because of the sympathy generated from the disaster, Manchester United gained a worldwide fanbase and became the biggest football club in England. Few people remember that the European Cup winners were Real Madrid, even fewer that I won the under 6 talent competition at Butlins, assisted by Ian the Redcoat, better known as Clinton Ford in 1959.

What's in a name?

wonder_lander · Dec 5, 2018

Heard another corker this morning relating to Computer Exchange that rebranded to CEX.

The advert tells if you want to sell your old games and gadgets then you can......at SEX - so instead of calling it Cee - ee - ex they've decided to be cheeky with the pronunciation and say it's sex!

The advert tells you to go to WeBuy.com - what a lot of mixed advertising messages!

RobM · Dec 5, 2018

Maybe now we're seeing the product of generations where educational standards all but vanished

keys · Dec 5, 2018

Who needs education when an 8 yr old can make £17m in a year from toy reviews on YT - literally childsplay.

There is no incentive to compete producing worthwhile or useful content, just keep the kids amused

timter51 · Dec 5, 2018

keys said:
Who needs education when an 8 yr old can make £17m in a year from toy reviews on YT - literally childsplay.

There is no incentive to compete producing worthwhile or useful content, just keep the kids amused

I promised myself not to be an overbearing parent when we had kids, but I have to stop my boy from watching that Ryan's Toy Reviews stuff... his mum in particular is so horrifically annoying. Fair play to them for making that much money from it, but I do genuinely believe they might have screwed up that kid for life. It'll be interesting (I guess...) to see what happens to him as he gets in to teens / adulthood, he must have such a warped perception of life already.

martin-s · Dec 5, 2018

Being a child star has rarely if ever been proved to be a good thing.

Radio test for a domain #Fail

wonder_lander

Pierre Barnard

RobM

dee

wonder_lander

Adam H

timter51

keys

lazarus

donton

lazarus

crabfoot

getmein

diablo

crabfoot

wonder_lander

RobM

keys

timter51

martin-s

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