Welcome to business in the Tweny-First Century! Wednesday
CitiGroup and
State Street Global Advisors swung front-page branding in
The Wall Street Journal by exclusively announcing the creation of their jointly-owned
CitiStreet defined contribution business. At an estimated $200 billion of assets under management, CitiStreet clearly is one of the top three defined contribution players.
A success, or so it seems, since everyone knows that CitiGroup honcho Sandy Weill wants to be in the pole position in every race.
The news, the strategy, the mindset -- negotiate a deal on the QT, release the details in a big way (preferably in the
Journal) -- all reflect business deals done the old way. Yet, the dealmakers also overlooked one key point in any deal in the new age -- the
URL.
In the Net age your name is your URL is your business: a concept that
RealNames has already built a business around but one that seems to have gone over the heads of old world executives.
Visit
CitiStreet.com and you won't see a breathless description of the new venture; instead you will see a fairly standard
ISP start-page. Why is the new venture letting its brand equity weather? And, what will CitiStreet do about it?
A quick check of
Register.com and a few phone calls revealed that the lucky lottery winner is Ajay Kumar Singh of Kingstown, Jamaica. Mr. Singh, it turns out, says that he works as a software engineer for the Jamaican Government's software development arm.
"I registered the name a long time ago," Mr. Singh explained to the 401kWire.com (according to the Internic record the URL was registered February 14, 1999). "I wanted to open up an Internet shopping company," he elaborated.
His plan was to create an Internet shopping website with a city street motif. Mr. Singh's company would host independent shops and develop the tenants' websites. His income was to come from advertising. Most likely that plan is evolving.
This morning he claims to have taken a call from a bank whose name he will not reveal. "They asked if I'm interested in selling it," he confided.
The question seemed to put Mr. Singh into something of a quandary since he had plans for the shopping site and he now admits that he may have to find a new name. Most likely he will be able to afford it.
Not only did CitiGroup and SSgA executives miss their dot.com, they also missed their dot.net and dot.org. The dot.net was grabbed by
Central Gulf Marine, Inc. of Richmond, Texas and the dot.org by
CPIC NET of Closter, New Jersey. Both of these names were registered on Wednesday, presumably after the news of the venture hit the front page of the papers.
What the executives overlooked is that many people -- and plan sponsors -- now turn to their browser before they open the yellow pages. Owning the URL also enables the easier sale of new age products as
Fidelity has learned the hard way by overlooking the importance of owning
e401k.com.
What's the right solution at this late date? The obvious old-school solution is to find a new name for the venture or its products and write off this week's branding as a sunk cost. Alternatively, CitiStreet could quietly send a negotiating team to Jamaica, get a tan, and hope that Mr. Singh does not know the value of his URL.
We offer a new age solution. On the Net, time is more important than money, and CitiStreet should just bite the bullet and get the deal done. Pay Mr. Singh $8 million for the name and reap the publicity for a second go round (Note to Jim Phalen, ceo of CitiStreet: make sure that Mr. Singh puts your message on the site first).
Why $8 million? Last month Sky Dayton and Jake Weinbaum of
eCompanies.com bought
Business.com for $7.5 million. Paying $8 million for an URL will put Sandy Weill into his comfortable position in the recordbooks and generate a round of news articles larger than the original announcement did. Those
who understand the value of
Buzz and branding believe that Weinbaum and Dayton (the twenty-something billionaire and former owner of ISP
Earthlink) got a bargain.
New Age Glossary:
ISP: An "Internet Service Provider" providing Web access services. AOL and Mindspring are the largest examples of ISPs.
URL: Universal Resource Locater. The name that you type in your browser to find a site on the Web. 401kWire.com is an example. 
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