Angry at Bank of America? Well, now there are fewer ways to express that rage.
Haters of Bank of America and CEO Brian Moynihan now have 439 fewer ways to express their Grinch-ness towards the bank.
In recent days, at least 439 Internet domain names that are critical of the bank’s top officials were taken off the market. The registrations of the domain names, which include imaginative swipes at the bank’s CEO, such as
BrianMoynihanBlows.com and
BrianTMoynihanSucks.net, effectively stop BofA-haters from slamming the bank’s top executives and directors –- or at least blocks any slams using a couple of very specific pejoratives.
Companies have made it
a practice to scoop up negative Web addresses that might be used by disgruntled customers, as The Wall Street Journal has reported. Such defensive Web strategies are particularly important at a time when a corporate reputation can be sullied by a few clicks of the mouse. For example, a satiric Twitter account set up after the Gulf of Mexico oil spill became a hub for criticism about BP.
But the buying of BofA names is a different approach. Where most efforts have been focused on the corporate brands, the focus here is BofA’s directors and corporate officers.
The BofA registrations followed this formula: Pull up the
public roster of the bank’s senior officers and
directors, and buy up web addresses with the officials’ names followed by the words “blows” or “sucks,” according to the list of the recently registered BofA Web addresses collected by research service Domain Tools. For example, among the domain names bought in recent days are at least 12 variations on Bank of America Chairman
Charles O. Holliday Jr.
Domain Name Wire’s Andrew Allemann first wrote about the BofA domain registrations.
The Web addresses weren’t registered in Bank of America’s name, but by a company called MarkMonitor, according to domain research service WhoIs. MarkMonitor bills itself as a strategist for protecting corporate brands, and it is among the handful of firms that buy Internet addresses on behalf of big companies, according to domain-registration experts. MarkMonitor previously has
registered domain names for Facebook and
Apple, among other big companies.
Bank of America didn’t respond to requests for comment. MarkMonitor could not be reached immediately.
Josh Bourne of
FairWinds Partners, which advises companies on their digital brands, said companies can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to $1 million a year on “defensive” registrations to help keep a lid on websites that may trash the company, or misdirect people to fraudulent Internet sites. For example, domain names xeroxstinks.com and
JCrewsucks.com are owned by their corporate namesakes, The Wall Street Journal has reported.
Companies “are definitely not trying to close every doorway, which is impossible,” Bourne said. “But you can close some of the most important doors” to criminal behavior or just plain corporate nastiness, said Bourne about the defensive registration of Web addresses.
But even after a blanket effort to buy up BofA-related Web addresses, there is plenty of room for critical Web sites.
BankofAmericaSucks.com already exists as a forum for people unhappy with the bank. The web name
ihatebankofamerica.com is taken, according to WhoIs, but is so far unused. BrianMoynihanblows.com may have been scooped up last week, but BrianMoynihanREALLYBlows.com is still available. So too is BofAisEvil.com, which is available for just $9.95 a year.
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The full list containing the newly purchased negative BofA Web addresses. (Thanks to
Domain Name Wire.)
UPDATE, in response to a reader query: This list reflects the domain names registered on the dates listed, and therefore includes several that are unrelated to Bank of America. Deal Journal stripped out these non-BofA domains from our numerical count contained in the post.
