wonder.land – is Lewis Carroll new gTLD’s best friend ?
wonder.land is at the same time a musical and a website build with a new Top Level Domain. The musical is described as ” inspired by Lewis Carroll’s iconic story, wonder.land is a coming-of-age adventure that explores the blurred boundaries between our online and offline lives.” It has been created by Damon Albarn, Moira Buffini and Rufus Norris, and is playing since summer 2015.
The domain name is identical to the product name itself, embedding the new gTLD – similarly to brands that were created in the past years with a .com or a ccTLD attached: netaporter.com, salesforce.com, or booking.com. This may be some sign of acceptance, and of understanding of that new Top Level Domain world.
Donuts is the registry the .land new gTLD, and while it is difficult to assess if wonder.land was actually a premium name or notable how much it did cost,a quick check gave the retail price for a .land domain for around 40 Euros. The domain wonder.land was created in January 2015, by the National Theater in London.
The following analysis of wonder.land practically illustrates how a domain name with a new gTLD can be used as a marketing tool, and how new gTLD enable to think differently.
Advertising
A large, impressive wonder.land red animation is projected on the walls of the national theater, just by the river Thames.
wonder.land is symbolized by the head of a cat ( the favorite online animal.. ).
Walking by the river close to Covent Garder, it is difficult not to see that big red illumination.
Vodaphone promotes the musical on its website
Search engines
A google search for the two separate words ranks wonder.land first in natural search, just after the adwords display for wonder.land, which is a “pay per click” advertising. But google spontaneously suggests a search on “wonderland” instead of “wonder land”, which does give very different results.
bing also ranks wonder.land first in natural search when performing a search for wonder land.
Social media
The National Theater is supporting the musical with a very explicit hashtag #wonderdotland
There are also some posts on instagram with #wonderdotland
Damon Albarn posted on Facebook about wonder.land
Immersive digital experience
A highly immersive digital experience was built by play nicely, using the hashtag #enterwonderdotland – explicitly mentioning the dot again.
The URL of that digital experience is a “traditional” ccTLD dot uk, showing how domain names can coexist and mutually be beneficial. You can build you avatar and have it printed in 3D.
about dotstories
dotstories supports brands in the activation of their dot brand. We have developed the dotstories cockpit that enables brands to design, publish and measure traffic with a Top Level Domain approach and dedicated, patent pending technology.