Cool domain name gets Home Office into trouble with Advertising Standards Authority
Howard Lake | 17 November 2006 | Blogs
The Home Office has paid the price for being a bit too trendy and down wiv da kids.
As Michael Webb reports in NFP Techno, a radio advertising campaign in March 2006, commissioned by the Home Office, directed listeners to the web address thinkUknow.com. “ThinkYouKnow.com” was presumably too old fashioned and difficult to spell for the txting generation.
Unfortunately for the Home Office enough people hearing “thinkUknow.com” on the radio managed to spell the full length version and visited “ThinkYouKnow.com”, which turned out to be a paid advertising landing page with links to adult content.
As Michael Webb points out, “somewhat ironically, the campaign’s objective was to promote safer web-browsing for minors”.
The Advertising Standards Authority upheld the complaint on 23 August 2006.
So, if you must use slang and abbreviations in a website address, make sure you’ve registered the domain names for possible misspellings and alternate spellings, particularly if you are relying on people hearing the web address rather than viewing it.
Alternatively, just spell words correctly.
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.