In early January the insurance provider Aflac® rolled out a new ad campaign with a focus on "You Don’t Know Quack" and used the domain name KnowQuack.com in the TV ad that I saw. The tag line is catchy and for sure get’s your attention. At first, I was like.. what do you mean I don’t know sh!t…

That is just one of the catchy things about the ad. The ad really entices you to visit KnowQuack.com to see what they are talking about!

Since I write about domain names and the development of the site and all the "little things" that make a difference, it is interesting to me to look into these ads and share the results of what I find and the reason I pick them to write about. Clearly there are a lot of things that go into these ads and the campaign behind them but I focus more on the domains and the site. Add in the fact of the HUGE amount’s of money spent, but yet I am able to pick out a good deal of flaws nearly every time.

Let’s start off with the good.

The ad is crazy catchy

  • KnowQuack.com is catchy and fitting with the popular Aflac duck
  • The ad is about reaching out to customers who do not know what Aflac offers
  • Built on a stand alone site (good for search engines)
  • Clean website design
  • Own multiple domain names

The bad, showing they do not know quack?

The little things!!!!!! It is the little things that drive me crazy.

Title and Meta! Come on! These are SO BASIC and they have this?

Know Quack.com Aflac Meta and Title issues

They have repeating Titles on two different domains and that is it! The paid ad on the top (peach color) has some text helping out, but the "free text" they can use (meta) they have NOTHING! To top it off.. they have NOTHING for the two sites they rank # 1 and # 2 for!

Instead of using a 301 redirect with the YouDontKnowQuack.com domain to KnowQuack.com, they make a duplicate site and have two live sites. I do not think this is a good idea because they are spreading traffic around and could confuse people since both rank high in SE’s due to the search term. In another way, it is good holding two of the 10 natural search engine ranking spots, but they could do this with one domain as well.

The Title is fine but it looks bad with two sites ranking right next to each other that are the same, minus the domain names!

The lack of ANY meta description is just plain silly! There is no reason for that and I am sure the finger should be pointed at the web development team Aflac used but also at Aflac for not catching it.

Back to some good and bad

The multiple domain names they own for the campaign is good. For the ones that I could find, make the most sense for them to own:

NoQuack.com This is a typo cover of Know, since it "sounds like" NO. This is a smart move and one often overlooked for many sites but they slap themselves in the face and didn’t do anything with it! The domain simply doesn’t resolve. A simple 301 redirect is what should be done with it to KnowQuack.com so visitors to the site are not missed!

YouDontKnowQuack.com It matches the main message, so good to own the matching domain because people may search for the term or visit it directly. Again, I would 301 redirect this domain to the "main" site, KnowQuack.com and use matching keywords in Title, Meta and the site content because it matches the campaign’s keywords.

KnowQuack.com Clearly owning the short version of the longer message in the ad. Easier for people to remember being shorter and likely why they used this domain in the ad. Plus it is catchy, and in a way tells people… If you don’t know quack, you can learn more at KnowQuack.com .

Overall, the site and domains are pretty good but once again… failure in many of the small aspects that can make a big difference!

Side note: Here are some keyword phrases that people are using to ‘find" the site in search engines that Aflac was talking about in its ad. Keep in mind this just launched in January and ones I could find.. search phrases are spaced by |

You Don’t Know Quack | Get To Know Quack | Don’t Know Quack | Know Quack.com | Know Quack | KnowQuack.com