I think this is a good idea but I’m not completely sure it will work. Here’s the concept: Huge numbers of people are now using online Web sites to buy products and services but how do they know whether they are dealing with the actual brand holder or its agent or even some company that is just claiming some kind of relationship with the brand?
The distinction between the brand holder and every other entity is important because there are many products that if purchased from an unauthorized reseller will not have a warranty. Worse still from everyone’s point of view are those sites selling fake branded products (a very common problem with things like pens and watches).
To deal with this problem of identifying the real site that represents a brand a new company, SealCOS (which stands for “Seal of a Certified Official Site”), has begun offering an eponymously named certification mark.
To become certified a Web site must be the brand’s official site, not an authorized reseller or third-party site; must sell or service consumers directly; and must only offer the brand’s products or services.
So, as SealCOS explains: “Nike.com would be eligible for SealCOS certification, FootLocker.com (a reseller) would not. In the same way, Delta.com would be eligible, while Travelocity.com would not.”
If those conditions are met then the brand site can use the SealCOS mark for the hefty price of $6,000 per year.
The mark, which has been patented and trademarked, will appear in the titles of certified brand sites (try a search for “Ghurka”). This allows consumers searching for branded products to recognize “official” sites and the more savvy consumers can include the term “SealCOS” to restrict their search results to just those sites (try the Google search “allintitle: ghurka sealcos”).
The concept is interesting so I ran it past my tame marketing guru, Jim Sterne of Target Marketing (some say he’s permanently wired to the Internet and that his metrics are accurate to six decimal places — if you watch the BBC’s “Top Gear” that will make sense otherwise, not so much); here’s his response:
“They may be onto something. IF it has an impact on search results then it doesn’t matter what the average surfer thinks. IF it makes it easier to find the hotel’s actual Web site rather than 427 listing services, then *I* would pay for it. IF you’re concerned about competing for advertising with your affiliates, it’s a good idea. But at $6,000 a year, a major brand is going to need a lot of convincing, me thinks.”
So far SealCOS has two brands on board, Ghurka and LeSportsac (both brands are owned by the holding company of Ghurka, Accessory Network Group, and who are, I understand, friends of the SealCOS founders).
Unless the company can really get consumer attention so that the SealCOS mark is recognized in context making the value to brands obvious I think they could be priced too high. It will be interesting to see how much traction SealCOS can get for their concept.
