I haven't really fooled around with any tld besides .com. I would imagine it would take a lot of extra effort to brand a different tld. Which might not be a bad thing, the extra efforts could help those that have problems focusing on more than one thing ( me especially). On the con side, it could be more expense and you run the risk of losing traffic to the .com of the same name.
As for the subdomain, this has potential to pay off especially if the subdomain is good keyword.
This is just my four cents (inflation, cents are not what they use to be

). My best advice is if you have some extra domains lying around, give it a shot, in these crazy times you never know.
Peace
Kujichagulia
KG
