GM: Rolls Out Its “May The Best Car Win” Campaign With Yamaha Motors Owning The .Com

by

Yesterday General Motors, rolled out its new money back guarantee program called “may the best car win”

Problem is MayTheBestCarWin.com isn’t owned by the new GM or the old GM for that matter, but by Yamaha Motors.

Although Yamaha doesn’t manufacture automobiles they do make golf carts, which is what they are marketing through their site.

So GM realizing that they couldn’t get maythebestcarwin.com, went ahead and registered TheBestCarWins.com on September 1st.

Nothing wrong with that domain, but knowing they didn’t have maythebestcarwin.com domain, why not just call their campaign “the Best Car Wins”? instead.

Why use a tag line when you don’t own the matching domain, rather than using a very similar tag line that you do own the domain?

And while we are on the subject, if GM had its heart set on “May the Best Car Win”  it probably should have spent another $10 and register TheBestCarWin.com on September 1 as well, but they did not and someone else registered it yesterday and it resolves to a parked page.

Why should you care about all this?

The new GM is owned 60% by you,  the US taxpayer.

About Michael Berkens

Michael Berkens, Esq. is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of TheDomains.com. Michael is also the co-founder of Worldwide Media Inc. which sold around 70K domain to Godaddy.com in December 2015 and now owns around 8K domain names . Michael was also one of the 5 Judges selected for the the Verisign 30th Anniversary .Com contest.

Comments

  2. Gazzip says

    LOL, not a very good idea…but, on a positive note it could have been worse, like Honda owning it 🙂

    I wonder how many hundreds of thousands they paid their advertising consultants to come up with that idea ??

  5. Human says

    Tried the website, and none of the things that come up as “most popular” are even GM brands! It listed Toyota, Acura, BMW as being the top picks for all their stuff. Kinda sad. GM is almost paying to be humiliated…

  6. Johnny says

    This is a big reason why the U.S. will never be able to hold the #1 position in the world.

    Most of the brightest folks who built this country were from the Great Generation. They are more or less gone now. The majority of the masses below them are dumbed-down and void personality, brains, and wit.

  8. Bill Sweetman says

    I am always stunned when these sorts of marketing screw-ups still happen, but in this case not so much. Here’s why…

    Years ago, I worked for the ad agency of record for GM’s Canadian division and (being the in-house domain name expert at the ad agency) I would sometimes get involved in domain name strategy discussions with the folks at GM’s head office in the United States. I still remember the time I noticed a great “GM” branded .com domain name up for auction on TDNAM. This was a domain name that GM needed to own, and the folks at GM agreed. I immediately suggested to GM that they should bid on and purchase this valuable domain name.

    At the time (and perhaps still to this day?) a lot of GM’s domain stuff was ‘managed’ by a well-known brand and domain management firm being paid a lot of money to stay on top of stuff like this. Not only had this firm not noticed this domain was up for auction, but they couldn’t even figure out how to buy it on TDNAM. Apparently this domain auction stuff was too complicated for them … LOL.

    In the end, I ended up bidding on and obtaining the domain name, and eventually I got it into the hands of GM. I did this several other times afterwards, in fact, and to this day I still can’t figure out what value that expensive ‘domain management firm’ brought to the table.

    So, as I said at the start of my post, this screw-up doesn’t surprise me too much. ;+)

  9. MHB says

    Bill

    I thought the same thing as well, but noticed the domain GM registered was very suprising done through Godaddy.com with privacy, and does not show any domain management firm on the whois record, as does GM.com

    Also interesting to note that Godaddy is the registrar for the domain they missed, thebestcarwin.com, although they are not the registrant and also for the domain TheNewGM.com, which was registered last year at Godaddy.com and guess what?

    GM doesn’t own that one either.
    Talk about a car company being asleep at the wheel

  10. Howard Neu says

    These big corporations and their attorneys are absolutely clueless when it comes to using slogans without having the corresponding domain name. for example, I own ItsTheMoneyYouCouldBeSaving.com, GEICO doesn’t.

  14. MHB says

    Brian

    I see GM has a trademark symbol on the TV commercial for “may the best car win” even though its doesn’t own the .com

  15. Brian Pasch says

    I saw that too on the video but you will notice that it is not on their official website or press releases. I doubt that they can trademark a phrase that has been in the public domain….but in any case the program is already dying on the vine.