Why "AskMyDog.com?"

May, 2008 - "Why askmydog.com?" People ask me that question all the time. Usually my response is "it was really funny back in 1996, the dawn of the Internet," which is the year I established that domain name for GCAI. Most people think it is cute or funny, some clearly don't. Here is what one blogger wrote in response to a news story about GCAI getting a new account: "...in my experience doing marketing consulting, branding, and logo and Web design, you want to pick an address that is fairly logical if possible, and not one that later becomes a joke."

In retrospect, I have to thank her because she helped me crystallize the real reason "Why." What this blogger didn't understand is that it was a joke when it started and people are still smiling about it today. I started the company back in 1991 with a vision to be, well...so not "fairly logical if possible," hereinafter referred to as the FLIP model.

The FLIP model would suggest that I should use something like "garvcomm.com" - very logical and all the subscribers to FLIP would love it as well as the redundant "comm.com," I suppose. I thought about it - but felt that garvcomm.com was dull, and you have to remember this was 1996 - sort of the Woodstock days of the internet. In the spirit of the micro blog twitter.com, here is what I was up to at the time: I had a wife, two kids, a Yellow Lab named Shadow, and we lived in a farmhouse with a big barn on 5 acres (108 characters). (Current update: still have family, moved because farmhouses are really old and expensive, and Shadow died in 2006.)

Every evening when I when I arrived home, I would take him out in the field and watch him work the open field, fringe cover, and woods. For whatever reason, I started to correlate his "work" with mine: marketing and PR. Shadow was looking for opportunities, so were my clients, both had to make choice about how much energy to put into a specific prospecting area.

So, in 1996 I wrote the content for my company's first website all from Shadow's perspective - links to a few of my favorite pages are on this page.

Shadow the Dog | Page 1 | Page 2

I also wrote at the time, "dogs don't lie." If you have a dog you get that. We now have three cats - I think they lie! Back to dogs and not lying: If they are happy, they wag their tail; when they eat the cat's food, they look guilty (and smell). Askmydog.com's "because, dogs don't lie" was my humorous attempt at offering the best reference I could think of: Shadow, my yellow lab, who would not lie. I received a lot of positive feedback from that first site. I guy in Sweden emailed me and told me how much he liked it. I sent him a t-shirt and he wrote back that he would be glad to wear more of my marketing collateral (scary). Today, the address still brings similes to faces when I say it. Simply put, Garvcomm.com would not have generated any smiles.

Garvey Communication Associates Inc. has been in business for eighteen amazing years now and we have opportunities to be "fairly logical if possible" all day long. Askmydog.com remains a place where we still can have a little fun.

 

©2008 Garvey Communication Associates, Inc.