A few years ago HBO’s Last Week Tonight with John Oliver showed a popular segment where Oliver mocked Bloomberg for his PR firm registering 400 .nyc domains to protect his image. With such a high profile piece, the result was a bump in registrations and more importantly, awareness of the .nyc extension. Many people were introduced to something other than .com for the very first time.

While since then, there have been lots of sightings of .nyc domains in use and continued adoption, there hasn’t been further high profile displays of domain use by large NYC based businesses or organizations. That is until today.

While watching CBS2 news this morning, I noticed every commercial break included an ad with the ending screen being a call to action, to go to a .nyc website. The ad was sponsored by the New York City Police Foundation and highlights an initiative by the NYPD to promote neighborhood policing. The initiative is called ‘Build The Block’ and their natural domain of choice is BuildTheBlock.nyc.

Below are the four videos that have been produced for the BuildTheBlock.nyc campaign. They each cover a theme: Familiarity, Relationships, Humanity and the Build the Block Launch.

Familiarity

Relationships

Humanity

Build the Block Launch

The videos are well produced. The message is sincere. The themes along with ‘togetherness’ and ‘local’ are well aligned with .nyc and it’s ideal use. This is another high profile use case because of the content and the media buy.

I believe in time, more organizations, initiatives, individuals and businesses will become aware. .NYC is a no-brainer. It makes sense. It’s relevant. It’s meaningful. Plus, there are many .nyc domains available for $25 that haven’t been available in the less meaningful and less relevant .com for decades.

Do you have your .nyc yet? Leave a comment below about what you think of the ads and if you’ve seen any other high profile use of .nyc domains.