As an Online Marketing Account Manager for an agency, I'm constantly explaining to clients why building the site for his new shiny widget at shinywidgetworldonl

As an Online Marketing Account Manager for an agency, I'm constantly explaining to clients why building the site for his new shiny widget at shinywidgetworldonline.net instead of ponying up the cash for shinywidget.com is a terrible idea. We do a lot of branding and brand-shepherding and it always amazes me how little people care about things like names and logos. They'll budget <$500 for something that's going to be the first thing every single one of their customers associates with their business. Obviously, if a company has a monopoly (Craigslist) or some other truly unreproducible competitive advantage, than these sort of blunders can be nullified. But I've never worked with one in the 5 years I've been doing this; I've worked with plenty who thought they did.