dotMobi

player23.mobi TV Ad

http://player23.mobi

On Saturday, July 25, dotMobi's Dara Ingoldsby was watching the Tri Nation 2009 New Zealand vs. South Africa rugby match on Sky Sports. And what shows up on the pitch but this ad for player23.mobi ...

MarksAndSpencer.mobi Now Live

Marks and Spencer Orange Juice Bottle

Marks and Spencer is one of the UK’s leading retailers, with more than 21 million people visiting their stores each week. 

And now, many of those millions will see "http://marksandspencer.mobi" on their packaging, as in the "live" example here of an empty orange juice bottle that's part of their "Food to Go" line, which is why the URL here reads, "http://marksandspencer.mobi/ftg". 

(And yes, I know it's hard to read in this shot, but I promise that's what it says.)

Another bite of LA Candy

Here's the back cover of Lauren Conrad's bestseller LA Candy; note the QR code and the .mobi address ...

In Las Vegas ...

In Las Vegas, a .mobi fan spotted this car -- branded for Millenia's .mobi site; Millenia is a Las Vegas fine art gallery.

NV.mobi Keeps On Going Strong

Our friends at the Nevada Commission on Tourism just sent us a cool group of photos, showing the promotion they're doing for http://nv.mobi in the Embarcadero BART station in San Francisco. (An earlier report of these photos as being in Las Vegas' McCarran International Airport were erroneous.)

You can see the full photostream on flickr.

A couple of interesting sites

1. icann.mobi -- If you're heading down to ICANN's meeting in Sydney, Australia, next week, you'll want to bookmark icann.mobi. The site has the complete meeting schedule for the event as well as information on how to get around Sydney and where you can have dinner and drinks. All phone numbers are click-to-call links, so it's easy to make reservations or call a taxi.

2. lacandy.mobi -- Even if you've never watched Laguna Beach or The Hills, you've likely heard the name Lauren Conrad (a/k/a/ "LC"). On 16 June, she's releasing a book called L.A. Candy and -- as part of the launch -- she's also launching a .mobi site: lacandy.mobi. You can find out plenty -- maybe more than you wanted -- about L.A. Candy at the site. And if you haven't yet "met" Lauren, you can catch up with what you've missed at the site.  

More dotMobi Consumer-level Advertising

Continuing with the consumer-level advertising we mentioned in our last entry (commercial for .mobi -- focusing on http://weather.mobi -- that's being broadcast in 43 major US airports throughout March 2009), we participated in a special "Smartphone Supplement" that was inserted in the March 13 edition of USA Today, America's only national newspaper. The ad is on page 10 (you can also see it just above this note).

The supplement will also be available for all attendees of CTIA Wireless 2009, which is coming up on April 1-3 in Las Vegas. If you're going to be there, you can let us know via our contact email links on our events page (where you can also find out about other upcoming events where dotMobi will be.) 

It's been busy, and now you're seeing the results ...

As I note in the headline, it's been a busy few months. The winter months may seem quiet, but the dotMobi team has been hard at work:

We've launched Instant Mobilizer, a tool that puts the mobile Web into practically everyone's hands. eNom just launched it for their many resellers, and many more .mobi registrars will be making it available over the coming weeks.

We've been at Domainfest, Parallels, Mobile World Congress and the DMA's Mobile Marketing Day, we're at ICANN Mexico and we're revving up for CTIA. You can keep track on our corporate Web site's events calendar.

We've announced the availability of one and two character .mobi domains ... and now we've announced the first brand using one: Fifth Third Bank with http://53.mobi.

We've been social networking via Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and now YouTube. And one thing we're especially exciting about on our YouTube channel is a commercial for .mobi -- focusing on http://weather.mobi -- that will be broadcast in 43 major US airports throughout March 2009.

We've been working on updating our branding elements for consistency across all of our Web properties. We still have some work to do and some elements that need cleaning up, but hopefully you're already enjoying the cleaner look. To help clarify one question that comes up sometimes, we're referring to the company as "dotMobi" and the domain as ".mobi" since we do a lot more things than just the .mobi domian -- as evidenced by the many activites you see on http://mobiForge.com and http://mobiThinking.com.

And for everything that's here, I promise there's lots & lots more we're working on ... Keep a look out -- and thank you for your ongoing support of the .mobi domain and the mobile Web.

Thumbs Up to the Nevada Commision on Tourism

Way back when, one of the first showcase sites dotMobi had to show people was for Las Vegas.

Now, Nevada is showing it still cares about .mobi. The Nevada Commission on Tourism owns and operates sites at http://nvroads.mobi and http://nvski.mobi. Not only did the Commission use dotMobi best practices when creating the sites, they've actually spent time and money promoting the sites.

Along with strongly featuring .mobi on their PC Web site (including education -- and a video -- on .mobi sites) and geo-targeted banner advertising on http://weather.mobi, the Commission has produced 3"x5" cards that are distributed at ski and sport shops. Here's a sample of the cards:

 
But my favorite thing? The Commission has put up NVski.mobi billboards on major highways ...

... Cool, huh?

No Mistaking It

You've been hearing us talk about "dotMobi Thinking" for months now. The ideas behind good mobile web sites are simple but the execution isn't always so easy. Many of us are still thinking of mobile web sites as small versions of their PC-counterparts. That's simply the wrong approach. We've reviewed this and other pitfalls in mobile web marketing to produce a new, free eBook called Ten Mistakes in Mobile Web Marketing.

In addition to highlighting some traps to avoid, we've shared great examples of best site practices from some of the mobile web's biggest brands including Bank of America, Smirnoff, Virgin Atlantic, BMW and Jaguar. Keep your eyes out for more from us on that on mobiThinking.com because we're just getting started. You can stay up to date by joining our mobiThinking email list.