Since December 2020, Gandi Corporate Services has been pleased to help Usborne Publishing in the implementation of their brand protection strategy. Specializing in children’s books, this family-owned company, founded in 1973, is one of the leading independent book publishers in the UK.
As Global Digital Director at Usborne Publishing until 2021 Lisa Watts was also in charge of managing and developing the domain portfolio strategy. She shares her experience about Gandi Corporate Services’ support and her relationship with the dedicated teams.
What was your position when you started working with Gandi Corporate Services? What were the challenges / expectations you had at that time with the handling of your domain portfolio?
In my position as Global Digital Director I was responsible for registering domains that included the Usborne Publishing trademark terms and which were important for our brand. Having been involved in this project for about 20 years, our domains were registered with a number of different registrars. Checking invoices, approving renewals, redirects and DNS settings was taking a lot of my time. We moved to Gandi Corporate Services for the security, the ease of working with a single company and the expectation that Gandi would manage all the details.
How did you hear about Gandi and what motivated the decision to move forward with our Corporate Services division?
I was recommended Gandi by world-of-mouth. A colleague who knew the company and services. I wanted an all-inclusive service so we went with the corporate services division.
Would you say Gandi Corporate Services helped you with the protection of your trademarks in a way that you were not expecting? What was the most interesting / unexpected thing you learned that you will take away from this relationship?
The additional audits and monitoring services have been invaluable for giving Usborne an overall view of the use of the Usborne name in cyberspace. I also learned about additional tools such as AdultBlock and TMCH that I had not been aware of. We benefitted enormously from the experience of our account manager and her advice around defensive registrations.
Do you feel Gandi Corporate Services met your overall expectations? What do you consider to be a major advantage or achievement that came out of your collaboration with Gandi Corporate Services?
The major advantage is that we now have a global overview of the use of the Usborne domain on the internet, and in a way that is comprehensible to other members of staff (eg legal, brand and marketing) who don’t have such detailed knowledge of domains.
Gandi Corporate Services went way beyond my expectations and enabled me to make informed decisions about our domains.
Would you recommend Gandi Corporate Services?
Yes I’d be happy to recommend Gandi Corporate Services to any one looking for the help I described.
We are very pleased to count Usborne Publishing as a client and we thank Lisa warmly for sharing her experiences.
Feel free to read more about how to pick a registrar in our interview with Matt Segall, the Director of Systems Development for the United Franchise Group (UFG), who manages 3,500 domains in approximately sixty TLDs with Gandi.
Would you like to know more? If like Usborne Publishing you would like to benefit from Gandi Corporate Services’ expertise in managing your domain name portfolio, our team would be more than happy to help you out.
