That’s why I’ve got much love for campaigns like the Nike ID MMS ‘footwear customisation’, everyone can get involved no matter what phone, the reach is immense (MMS handset penetration is over 95% in places like the UK).

I was very fortunate to work on the Vodafone account at Nokia Interactive (formerly Enpocket) which gave me access to unlimited amounts of MMS to test, innovate and just basically do cool stuff. We sent MMS communications to over 2 million customers each month (some examples in my portfolio) and it’s a great channel if done right, not just for ‘push’ advertising but ‘pull’ too.

Because we were doing up to 5 campaigns a week and really busy with deadlines etc, you tend to forget the significance of your work. And because we were sandwiched between two global mega-companies there were rarely any press releases or case studies. It’s a shame because we had campaigns that got triple figure response rates and uplift in services that no one talked about. If I would have had a blog back then it would literally have about 150 campaigns by now, however here is one I can share without any restraints.

The following campaign for Vodafone was created by the fantastic creative team at Nokia Interactive (who have now formed the mobile agency Movement London). Bit gutted I didn’t get to work on this one as I had already moved to user experience but it’s definitely one of my favourite campaigns to leave the company.

Vodafone ran their own set of concerts exclusively for customers called Vodafone TBA. We often did a large amount of activity at the events (ticketing, Bluetooth, etc) and built anticipation beforehand using messaging.  Check out the video:

I think it’s a great experience that complemented the live gigs perfectly. The technology is complicated at the backend but simple for the user, just fire off a MMS and get a download for your video. Take it away and show or forward it to your mates. Done.

If you like what you see speak to Mark, Tim or Sarah at Movement or follow @MovementLondon. They occasionally let me make tea for them when I visit their office.

Check out this campaign for the pension company AMF which went live last year. Its aim was to encourage young people to start thinking about their pensions sooner rather than later.

How did they manage to do this? By ‘ageing’ your face of course!

Outdoor billboards and TV adverts prompted the viewer to send a picture of themselves via MMS to a shortcode. A few minutes later the sender receives a picture of their face showing how they would look if they were 70 years old.

Some outdoor ads were made using lenticular printing which allows the image of a young man to morph as you move your viewing angle.

The campaign was well supported by online, with users being able to upload their pictures via the website as well as banners driving traffic. I’m pretty impressed with the consistent message across all the different types of media, especially the TV ad which featured famous young Swedish people, portrayed as seniors.

This campaign makes it fun to engage with AMF and share the ‘aged’ picture with friends. Although it doesn’t really address the reasons why young people like me don’t put money into a pension (probably not the objective anyway), it works great for brand awareness.

Results for the campaign were very impressive with 322,946 pictures sent via MMS which exceeded targets by 546%. Advertising awareness increased by 33% and preference of AMF quadrupled during campaign.

This picked up the ‘Best Mobile Marketing Campaign’ at The Epica Awards for the agency Forsman & Bodenfors.

What do you get when you take the Schiesser Bluetooth underwear campaign and use SMS instead? You get this ad from Axe deodorant (or Lynx if you’re in the UK). Click to enlarge.

The print ad displays a picture of a model looking like she could be naked and a call to action. The message says “To complete this ad send Axe to 2345 after 9pm”, once you send the text you get a picture message (MMS) back with the rest of the ad showing the model in her underwear. Great, so you paid 11p to basically look at a Marks & Spencer’s advert.

Although I think only allowing the user to text-in after 9pm is admirable, it surely doesn’t need to be done for this ad seeing as the reveal is something you would see on the front of a few magazines in a shop. What if you saw the ad at 4pm? Would you really go back five hours later?

The same sort of thinking applies to this outdoor ad where the light behind the poster comes on a night to reveal the bottom half of the model. However this one has no mobile call to action meaning if your kid is walking back late from football practice, well that’s tough because they are gonna see some skin.

The agency behind these ideas is Lowe Gingko.

Yahoo! ads seem to be appearing on various bus routes in London with the call to action of “What do you see?” Here’s the rest:

Share your brilliant view with others.. it’s easy! MMS your brilliant photo taken from this bus to 07786 201 809 and you could win a Brilliant Thing!

You can see loads of others at www.brilliantbusviews.co.uk. Enjoy the ride.

‘What do you see?’ floor stickers have also been placed around London telling people to share the view with others and take a picture from that spot. The spots have a keyword that the user needs to include with the MMS such as ‘SPOT060′ allowing Yahoo! to identify where in London the picture has been taken.

Once you send in a picture it turns up on the Brilliant Bus Views Flickr page (MMS is a feature of Flickr), you can also use E-mail or add it to the Flickr group. About 251 photos have been uploaded so far some are quite cool, the best pictures seem to end up on the Aren’t Things Brilliant blog.

I can’t find anything about this campaign online either, I’m assuming it’s just a mini brand awareness campaign? I like what they have done with the floor markers over London and the unique keywords.

Wonder what the brilliant prize is?

In this spirit of the campaign I decided to take a picture from my view on the bus..

The report, ‘Mobile Messaging & IP Evolution’, found that the Far East & China would lead the global ad-funded MMS market by a considerable margin, followed by North America and Western Europe.

Personally I think Europe is leading the way with MMS ads especially in the UK. The work I’ve done with Vodafone over the past 3 years was heavily focused on targeted MMS ads to millions of customers every year. Check out examples here and here. Also companies like Blyk and 3 are doing a fair amount of MMS ads to customers.

Ever since I first got involved with MMS I’ve been excited by the huge potential. Messages can contain video, audio, images and text, all seamlessly sent to the customer with no cost incurred to them (in the UK at least). Far more engaging than SMS if done correctly.

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t still make your ads targeted and relevant though, and that’s where mobile operators have the upper hand. They know what handset the customer has, if they are set up to receive MMS and more importantly behavioral habits and demographics. The problem for brands has generally been that access to this data has been closed off. However according to various sources this is due to change in the future with operators looking for new revenue streams. This will hopefully bring the cost of bulk buying MMS down, as it stands it’s far too costly. I have a feeling that the iPhone will help bring down the consumer cost of MMS so this should hopefully affect the business cost.

One interesting (although obvious) snippet:

The number of brands using MMS as an advertising medium is growing rapidly, with push MMS and SMS being employed to great effect in both mature and emerging markets. Crucially, this has enabled network operators to support ad-funded voice and SMS tariffs, and combat falling ARPU, while providing brands with new advertising channels.

I’m looking forward to see how brands (and O2) approach the iPhones ability to send and receive MMS.  Depending on how MMS is implemented into the iPhone it could lead to some great ad experiences similar to the ones created using apps.

You have got to hand it to Nike and their agencies, time after time they produce some really innovative and engaging mobile marketing campaigns.

It seems like Nike totally trusts its agencies and lets the mobile experts there do what they do best.  Campaigns have mobile at the center rather than a text call to action awkwardly shoe horned in at the end, because of this you get some fantastic, groundbreaking work.

Here are my favourite picks:

Nike iD Interactive Billboard – Times Square, New York

Nike launched a 23-story interactive billboard in times Square displaying customisable footwear from the Nike iD range.

You dial the number that appears on the billboard and use your phones keypad to start customising the on-screen shoe….in real time! You then get sent a text message with a link to download a wallpaper of your design or even buy it.

The beautiful thing about this is that it works on every phone, no apps, no software, just a simple phonecall. Brilliant.

Check out the larger image here or the video below:

Nike Photo iD – Customise Footwear Via MMS

This idea was just simply delicious. You take a picture of something you like the look of on your phone, send it to a number as a picture message, then you get back the link to your shoe, completely customised using the colours extracted from the photo!

Just like the billboard campaign, you can then download it as a wallpaper or go on and purchase the shoe.

It’s a shame such a good idea didn’t get promoted more, I would have like to have seen this as part of a print, outdoor or TV campaign. This is another mobile execution where pratically every handset is compatible. Check out the Youtube promo video below.

This campaign deservedly picked up a number of awards, including IMA and MMA.

The agency behind this was AKQA and the picture recognition technology by Mobile Aquity

Nike Zoom China – Bluetooth Stopwatch

Another award winner, this time using Bluetooth.

Bluetooth enabled billboard ads appeared in Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou, as passersby approached they receieved a message telling them to run to the nearest Nike store as fast as possible.

A virtual stopwatch is activated the moment the person receieves the message, once they get to the store with their mobile the time is stopped.  Everyday the store gave away a pair of running shoes to the fastest person, their name also appeared on the billboard the next day

The campaign stats are pretty immense for something running 3 weeks.

Across three cities in three weeks: 250 000 Bluetooth messages delivered, 15 000 participants and 63 pairs of Nike Zoom shoes awarded, 1.7 billion online impressions, 19 million print impressions and 17 million OOH target audience impressions.

15,000 participants! To put that in perspective it’s around roughly half of the London Marthaton. Check out the crazy video of the campaign below.

Credit goes to agency Mindshare.

Nike T90 - Augmented Reality Treasure Hunt In Hong Kong

To promote the launch of Nike’s T90 boot amongst teens during the Euro 2008 period, a series of black and white markers were posted in Nike stores, subway stations and magazines throughout Hong Kong.

Once you find a marker you text in the keyword on it to download a special Nike ‘Augmented Reality‘ application. After you load the app and point your phone camera at the code it becomes a virtual 3d T90 boot and ball which rotates as you move your phone around it. Within the 3d graphic is a special code which users text in to continue the hunt and also be entered into a sweeps stake for Nike merchandise.

This is slighly more complicated than the others but it works because of the target market in Hong Kong.

The agency behind this goodness is The Hyperfactory.

Click here for the video.

Nike WAP and iPhone Apps & Sites

Nike have launched a whole host of lovely looking WAP and iPhone sites which focus around various campaigns or products, including dedicated Air Force 1 and Nike Zoom sites.

Some of the functionality is far and beyond what you normally get with mobile sites such as 200+ sports video and 800+ product profiles.

Check them out here.

In October they also launched the Nike ID iPhone application, check out the video below:

It’s hard to pick a favourite but I’m going to have to go with the Times Square billboard because of the sheer scale and mass handset reach. Whats yours?