We’ve said it for decades, and Popeyes just proved our point. If you’re thinking about buying a promotional URL (or a company URL), make sure you get some of the most obvious variations of it so that competitors don’t feel compelled to exploit it as a weakness.

That’s what happened recently with the launch of McDonald’s new crispy chicken sandwich promo. The McDonald’s promo entitled chicken drop, used the strange abbreviation of “chkn drop” and accompanying URL. The truncation was so unusual, we honestly had to check our own spelling of the official promo multiple times when we wrote this BUZZ article. That uncertainty, which wasn’t isolated to us, should have been cause for concern when creating the promotion. Regardless, the damage was done and Popeyes proceeded to capitalize on the confusing abbreviation by purchasing 50 URLs with slight variations in spelling (i.e. chkendrop.com). Popeyes offered the first 10,000 people who found the page a free chicken sandwich.

So let this serve as a warning. Don’t let your goose, or chicken in this case, get cooked by another brand. Protect yourself by procuring domains that are similar to your own.