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Domain Screwup? A slip of the tongue may have resulted in a typo in a newspaper article. The typo certainly caused some embarrassment as the site mentioned was a hard-core porn site and it appeared that an Irish internet consultancy had a "significant share holding" in it. The internet consultancy in question was Nua. The article had appeared in the business section of the Irish Independent newspaper. It was a puff piece about Nua and it even managed to mention that Gerry McGovern of Nua was a highly regarded internet guru. It obviously was a slow news day at the paper. The prize quote was: "Nua is also a significant shareholder in Adonis, an Irish-based start-up that aims to do for jewellery sales on the net what amazon.com did for book sales. Adonis.com will headed by Galway entrepreneur Declan Ganley who said he has $61m in debt and equity for the venture." It all looks very innocent and impressive until you actually click on www.adonis.com. The site is a portal for hard-core porn. Due to a typo, it looked like Nua had shares in a hard-core porn site. The reality of the situation was that the correct domain was Adornis.com. It is a pretty stupid name. The site www.adornis.com exists and is hosted on a Nua virtual, though it is currently password protected. The irony of all this is that Nua is a consultancy that presents itself as an online relationship management company and one that "combines its marketing, communications, creative and technical expertise to deliver online brand solutions". It is not known if Nua had anything to do with choosing such an easily compromised brand identity. Adornis, by the similarity to Adonis is a compromised brand name. One of the first rules of marketing is that the brand is unique and identifiable. It must not be confused with similar products. Phonetically, Adonis sounds too close to Adornis. With certain accents, the ‘r' sound will be completely lost and potential users will end up at the hard-core porn portal. Even more problems arise in the German translation. The word "adornment" in German is "der Schmuck." That term was absorbed into Yiddish and has a more unfortunate connotation. The logic of selling jewellery over the web is suspect. The products that sell well are generally information rich. There is also a ritual to buying jewellery and it involves the touch and feel of the product. In addition, things such as rings have to be adjusted to fit properly. Some things just don't have the same effect on the web. The Independent article was rehashed in the Sunday Business Post newspaper complete with the wrong domain name. However the funniest thing of all is that the erroneous puff piece is now referred to on Nua's frontpage. |
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