Don't waste the dot-com clout - ViewPoint - dot-corn consumer advertising - Brief Article

DSN Retailing Today, Nov 19, 2001 by Tim Craig

It was comforting for us New Yorkers to see that the Yankee's historically strong batting presence wasn't the only thing missing from the World Series this year. Conspicuously absent from the 2001 baseball finals was also the high-ticket, dot-corn consumer advertising that's become a mainstay of New York's October airwaves.

From the once-ubiquitous Yahoo yodel to the Fogdog mascot who made round-the-clock deliveries, the icons of yesterday's dot-coin publicity boom have all but vanished into cyberspace.

But their absence hasn't diminished their appeal. In fact, few periods in the history of television advertising yielded results as bold and creative as those from the dot-coin boom. Furthermore, the impressions they made were lasting, even if the ads themselves were not.

Most American consumers, whether Internet savvy or not, can still picture the Pets.com sock puppet, and many probably have received gifts from, or even shopped at, such well-known Internet names as CDnow, Egghead.com and eToys.

The simple reason we know these names is because of the lavish spending during the dot-coin boom. In 1999, when the NASDAQ was riding high and the entire industry was in marketing overdrive, these companies channeled much of their resources on carefully crafted television ads.

Egghead.com, for one, spent $50 million on advertising in 1999, which earned it more unique visitors than Best Buy, Kmart and Toys "R" Us combined. CDnow and eToys spent comparable amounts on advertising and gained even greater brand recognition. By December 1999, they accounted for two of only seven pure retail companies on the Media Metrix Top 50 Web Sites.

The brand recognition these companies garnered in such a short time was arguably their greatest assets, so when the stock market came crashing down on Internet retailing, the power of those brands, along with a handful of select physical assets, were all that was left.

Quick-witted bricks-and-mortar companies in search of reputable online brands wasted no time snatching up the goods-the lucky ones being those that walked away with high-power, household names. Of the Internet retailing companies mentioned here (or what's left of them), most of the brands are now owned, in full or in part, by some other company. Global Sports owns and operates Fogdog; PetsMart owns the Pets.com URL; Bertelsmann owns and operates CDnow; Fry Electronics nearly picked up Egghead.com; and K*B Toys owns eToys.

Amazingly, though, of these five companies, only Bertelsmann has kept its iron in the coals when it comes to maintaining the strength of a once-famous online brand. While the other brands have fallen into virtual anonymity, CDnow still tops the Media Metrix charts, sitting comfortably as one of the top five retail sites overall.

As for the others, well, let's just say there's a whole lot of head scratching goin' on-and the more they scratch, the further these brands fall out of favor with the consumers.

Take eToys, once the benchmark for e-tailing excellence. When K*B Toys relaunched the eToys site last month, it did so with remarkably little fanfare. Like every other company in possession of a hot Internet brand, K*B Toys should be strengthening this name through more concerted advertising-before the franchise gets too cold. Anything else amounts to squandering the millions of dollars used to build the brand up in the first place.

If there's any truth to the saying "time is money," those who intend to leverage the brands made popular in the Internet retailing heyday better act quickly. With each passing day the window of opportunity is getting smaller, and the chance to profit is fading fast.