Good marketing or .org abuse?

Posted on Dec 28, 2009 in Marketing, Web Dev | 1 comment

Google’s (un)intelligent AdSense engine decided to show me an ad the other day. It encouraged me to “exercise my right to eat freely,” and displayed www.EatFreely.org as the URL. “That’s odd,” I thought, re-reading the ad. “There are the words ‘Hot Pockets®’ right there; how can this be an ad for a .org domain?” Take a look at the ad:

The first thing that comes to mind when I hear “Hot Pockets” is, of course, Jim Gaffigan’s hilarious stand-up bit from Beyond the Pale. Comedy aside, I was intrigued by the use of a .org domain for something associated with Hot Pockets. So I clicked and found myself looking at a very busy, animated marketing site for a fictional movement to “eat freely,” by which they mean the ability to eat nasty meat stuffed inside a Pop Tart without having to be bothered by inconveniences like chairs and cutlery.

This was surprising. I was under the apparently mistaken notion that .org domains were the exclusive domain (ha, sorry for the pun) of non-profit and charitable organizations. Hot Pockets’ schlocky marketing site masquerading as such an organization immediately rubbed me the wrong way, much the same way actually eating a Hot Pocket rubs my tongue, esophagus, stomach, and intestines the wrong way. This travesty was sullying the very name of reputable .org sites like People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the American Lung Association, Boys & Girls Clubs of America, and even SOTA : The Society of Typographic Aficionados.

As I researched the issue in preparation for my protest to ICANN, I discovered this sad fact: Hot Pockets are not wrong. At least, not in the sense that their “eat freely” campaign site is hosted as a .org; they are wrong in every other sense of the word. The following text is stated on the Public Interest Registry website

When you buy a .ORG, … You’re linking your organization – your cause – to a worldwide community of mission-driven organizations that are trying to make the world a better place.

Through the registry for .ORG, your organization is linked to a well-established brand of trust and integrity. One of the original top-level domains (TLDs), .ORG became the domain of choice for organizations dedicated to serving the public interest, and today .ORG is considered one of the most trusted domains on the internet.

Nonprofits, foundations, philanthropic and cultural institutions, religious, civic, arts, social and fraternal organizations, health and legal services, clubs and community volunteer groups… if yours is a noncommercial entity, people expect to find you in the .ORG community.

Apparently the Public Interest Registry has no problem with a branding site for hand-held processed food products also obtaining a .org domain.

I turned to the font of all true knowledge (Wikipedia) for the truth and was sad to read this:

Although .org was recommended for non-commercial entities, there are no restrictions to registration. There are many instances of .org being used by commercial sites. .org was also commonly recommended for use by individuals, although .name and .info are now alternatives.

(Emphasis mine.)

So there you have it: anyone can register a .org. That means a little extra vigilance is required on our part when researching things online. Maybe ViagraRules.org or HappyNapsWithAmbien.org aren’t dispensing unbiased information after all? Caveat browsor, I suppose.

In all seriousness, though, online campaigns such as “eat freely” are only going to become more prevalent. Is the way in which these campaigns are branded something we, as consumers, should care about? Every ad agency out there is hoping to pitch the next Will it Blend phenomenon (note they appropriately used a .com domain), and it’s likely that we’ll see more of them wrapped up in .org domains. Sure, it’s unlikely anyone would mistake EatFreely.org as anything but advertising. But as I attempted to show with my humorous examples above, not all .org domains may be as innocent. Drug- or agricultural products companies may register a .org domain and put up a site that has all the somber “authority” of a government or true organization’s site, but present only positive information about their products while obscuring their dangers.

With other top-level domains (TLDs) like .net and recent additions like .name, .info, .biz, etc. there seems little justification in using .org domains to promote or sell products. Registering a .org domain should require proof of non-profit 503(c) or charitable status (or their equivalents outside the U.S.) to combat this trend.

But in a sense, I suppose Hot Pockets have made “the world a better place” for some. Just ask Jim Gaffigan.

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