PizzaHut to PastaHut – Another Corporate Domaining Blunder

Posted on October 12th, 2008 by admin in Domain News | No Comments »

With the aim to promote eight new pasta dishes in the UK, Pizza Hut recently decided to rebrand 30 Pizza Hut restaurants to Pasta Hutt. As part of their rebranding effort they registered PastaHut.co.uk.

According to DomainNews what they failed to do was acquire PastaHut.com which has been registered for a while, or register any of the other tlds – PastaHut.net, PastaHut.org or PastaHut.info.

This was a fatal mistake as following their rebranding announcement the .org, .net and .info domains were quickly snapped up by cybersquatting.

“It never fails to surprise us how quick off the mark cybersquatters are to register the domains of major brands where given the opportunity,” said NetNames chief operating officer Jonathan Robinson. “Organisations need to manage their online brand effectively and proactively register relevant domains well ahead of a major launch or rebrand.”

It’s interesting how large corporations invest millions of dollars into rebranding and marketing efforts yet fail to do the simple things like register all available tlds for a domain name.