Kerem Benli had a challenge on his hands...

The Founder and VP of Product Design at Briabe Media has discovered an innovative mobile media buy for their client, Zhena’s Gypsy Tea; they quickly got the approval… then found themselves with a .mobi site to build in just three weeks to handle the click-throughs.

Together with Gypsy, Benli wanted to try an alternative media approach to engage its youthful female target audience and break free of the clutter of traditional media channels. Research showed that a high percentage of women play mobile games on their phones and Gypsy jumped at the chance to try in-game advertising with one of the largest mobile carriers in the US.

The mobile banner ad placement was between levels in Roller CosterCoaster Rush, the mobile roller-coaster game for Motorola Razr and SLVR phones.. The game’s target audience matched Zhena’s Gypsy Tea’s perfectly: women between 24 and 40.

Keeping it simple

With just three weeks to design and build the site, Briabe Media (specialists in multi-cultural and targeted mobile marketing) knew they had to focus on a few desired outcomes and keep the experience as simple as possible.

The result: GypsyTea.mobi., a friendly, well-executed site that draws from the look and feel of Gypsy’s .com website and aims to do four things:

• Introduce Zhena’s Gypsy Tea
• Show consumers where to buy
• Offer a sampler tin
• Sign up for the newsletter

The newsletter sign-up (“Join Our Tribe”) presents just two fields: name and email. No page has more than 75 words.

Testing for readiness

The site tested 5 out of 5 on ready.mobi, the free mobile site testing tool that evaluates compliance with mobile standards and best-practice coding and design.

“We always use ready.mobi for our sites,” said Benli, “it makes sure the site is optimized and catches anything like too much image weight. This way we go live knowing the user experience will be fast and easy.”

The site lives on

The GypsyTea.mobi site was planned as a one-month campaign site, but its success led Gypsy to keep it going, with plans to update it for special days such as Mother’s Day and Valentine’s Day. According to Benli, the click through rate for the ad was 18 per cent, significantly higher than most banner ad campaigns

Mobile banner campaigns and sponsorships will be used to drive traffic to the site.

Shameless plug: choosing the .mobi name

Briabe Media recommended the .mobi domain name for the Gypsy Tea site for its consumer-friendliness.

“Using .mobi is just easier for the consumer,” Said Benli, “Some developers feel it’s simpler to deal with a single domain for both desktop and mobile web, but when you look at it from the user’s perspective, .mobi is the obvious choice. People are getting to know that .mobi stands for a mobile-optimized experience.”

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