How does a new company brand name come into existence? The old perception of brand creation was that a room full of marketers got together and brainstormed for hours, fueled by copious amounts of coffee. Once their job was done, the marketers would then ask the legal department to do the traditional trademark screening and research. In the meantime, the creative geniuses in the marketing department would begin to conceptualize magazine advertisements and come up with catchy phrases to promote the brand.

Fast forward to today.

Now, with more and more marketing spend going toward digital and mobile media, companies have to take the Internet into account at the brand creation stage. Ask yourself, how long is your new brand name? What does it look like typed as one word? A name like copiouscoffee would not be easy to type. Although domain names may not be officially recognized as intellectual property assets, they still matter - consider what might happen to Google or Amazon without their .com domain name.

There have been many occasions when brand owners have had to spend thousands of dollars acquiring domain names after they decided to launch a brand. Just recently, Apple announced the launch of its new iPad tablet without owning the domain ipad.com. In the past, Apple spent millions of dollars acquiring iphone.com. Perhaps this was a deliberate ploy to keep the name a secret – Apple’s online strategy may be to push traffic to apple.com. Notwithstanding this, how many visitors do you think ipad.com received when Steve Jobs announced the new brand?

Even companies that sell traditional consumer goods, such as washing machines or cars, need to think about the impact of the Internet. Almost two-thirds of consumers research products online before they purchase. Do you know whether they type the name of your brand into their browser or use a search engine to find you?

In short, marketing and trademark professionals need to look at more than just screening trademarks. They need to screen domain names as well. CSC has received reports of companies that have not secured their domain name days before a brand launch. Even though the company placed the intended domain name in all of its marketing materials, no one thought to register the name or even check its availability.

Your company may screen domain names as standard practice when launching new brands, but do you work with a service provider who can do more than just provide search results? Without the appropriate communications between departments and suppliers, registering the right domain names can become an afterthought. Choose your service provider carefully, since a good supplier can help you register the domain names you need.

With the advent of globalization, many companies now conduct trademark screening beyond a single national register.  Instead, they look at core markets across Europe and Asia and some of the emerging markets in Africa and  South America. Research your domain names in a similar vein. By the end of 2009, there were more than 76 million country-code top level domains (ccTLDs) registered around the world.   

Over the coming years, we will see many new and creative brand names in the marketplace. However, for new brands to truly flourish, companies will need to accept that the digital age is upon us. Driving traffic to your Web site is just as important as choosing the right real estate within a shopping mall.

To help companies navigate the domain landscape, CSC advises trademark professionals to conduct a Global Domain Availability Search along with their trademark screening to locate exact matches of their new name in more than 700 domain extensions.  Learn more about how CSC can help you avoid a misstep in the uncharted territory of protecting your brand on the Internet.