Build Your …
Anyone following the European Football Championship in Germany has undoubtedly noticed the various Chinese sponsors of the event, such as Alipay, Aliexpress and Vico.
The largest Chinese sponsor is BYD (Build Your Dreams), a manufacturer of electric cars and batteries, which is currently vying with Tesla for the top spot in electric vehicle sales. In addition to featuring BYD on numerous billboards and other advertising spaces, a television ad campaign is scheduled around the broadcasts of the championship.
One of the goals of this cross-media campaign is to increase brand awareness. This effort is not limited to Europe but aims to reach a global audience, as events like the European Championship attract millions of viewers from outside Europe.
Those intrigued by BYD will likely visit their website. However, which website should they go to? Typically, you would assume that any BYD website and URL would belong to this major player. The ‘.com’ domain name does indeed belong to BYD. However, this is not the case for the German byd’.de’; here, you end up on the website 'Buy Your Dildo'. Quite unfortunate, and while also electric, not something the Chinese company wants to be associated with. Due to the number of visitors this site attracted, Buy Your Dildo felt compelled to include a notice redirecting visitors to the correct BYD website.
Does this mean that as a brand owner you need to register the domain name for every country? For key countries, this is advisable. However, especially with abbreviations like BYD or existing words, this can be challenging. In many cases, the URL is already owned by another party and can only be acquired at a significant cost. Good visibility of the .com website can work wonders in these situations. But when you spend millions to sponsor an event in a particular country, preventing a website like Buy Your Dildo should really be a top priority.
www.BYD.de
Author: Arnaud Bos
Bio: Arnaud is trademark attorney and within Knijff responsible for the marketing & communication. Arnaud is specialist in the metaverse and music sectors and his client portfolio includes many upcoming and renowned bands. He keeps a close eye on the latest case law in the EU and will let you know when he sees remarkable applications.