Reebok tapped Mogreet’s mobile video marketing platform for the campaign. In addition to Reebok, Mogreet clients include Warner Brothers, Lions Gate, Starwood Hotels and DefJam.

“Brands have been yearning to reach out to new and existing customers with a high-quality and engaging rich-media experience on mobile phones,” said James Citron, CEO of Mogreet, Venice, CA. “While many marketers are excited by the ubiquity of text messaging, it doesn’t offer much in the way of engagement, interactivity or emotion, compared to a television ad, for example.

“On the opposite end of the spectrum, the iPhone has enabled far deeper and richer experiences for advertisers and brands on mobile phones,” he said. “However, it still only reaches a subset of the U.S. population, a percentage of the smartphone market, which is far from mass-market.

“Mogreet built its mobile video marketing platform to combine the two—provide marketers the capability to communicate with their audience with high-quality, engaging experiences leveraging video—the preferred storytelling vehicle on TV, online, etcetera.”

Reebok International Ltd., a subsidiary of German sportswear giant Adidas, is a producer of athletic footwear, apparel and accessories.

Consumers were driven to watch Reebok’s video online and through a variety of social media Web sites geared to the target audience of fantasy football crowd, young athletes and NFL fans.

Consumers were urged to text one of two keywords—REEBOK or RBK—to the short code 21534. Those who text in receive the following message in return:

“This message is checking your handset’s video capabilities. Another message will arrive soon. Reply HELP REEBOK for info, STOP REEBOK to end. Msg & data rates may apply.”

If their phone supports video, Mogreet sends them a Reebok mobile video via MMS. If their phone does not support video, they receive a text message similar to the following:

“Ur phone doesn’t support video. Go 2 http://www.mogreet.com/vw/dlde1x7a from ur computer.”

In return for opting into Reebok’s mobile database, consumers were entered into a contest to win tickets to an NFL game and Reebok NFL merchandise, as well as receive exclusive discounts on a new line of Speedwick performance apparel.

This campaign was a success because it married a compelling consumer offer with viral video content, which translated into nearly fifty percent click-through and a viral-sharing phenomenon via mobile, according to Mogreet.

Mobile video via MMS
Founded in 2006, Mogreet enables marketers to combine the expressiveness of video with the ubiquity of text messaging to create the most effective way to communicate in mobile, mobile video messaging.

The company has raised $7 million in venture capital from Ascend Venture Group, Black Diamond Ventures, DFJ Frontier and Spyglass Ventures.

Mobile video messaging platform provider Mogreet debuted its mobile marketing service, the Mogreet Mobile Video Marketing Platform, which is scalable across all tier-one U.S. carriers, including Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile USA.

Mogreet’s platform can deliver short-format videos to more than 200 million U.S. mobile devices, while measuring the effectiveness and ROI of each campaign in real-time.

Mogreet claims that its clients routinely experience open rates, video views and click-through rates 15 to 25 times higher than other forms of advertising media.

And by virtue of the fact that mobile customers react to text messages in 20 seconds on average—versus hours or days for email—brands see results almost instantly, according to Mogreet.

Marketers can also benefit from the inherent virality of mobile video, as mobile messages can be shared amongst friends, which can result in 5-to-10 times as much reach.

The demographic that Mogreet targets varies by advertiser.

“We have very successful clients focused on the affluent demographic ages 40-60 in the hospitality industry, as well as brands reaching the teen, 14-24 audience,” Mr. Citron said.

“Integrating our platform into a brand’s media campaign is seamless and enables the marketer that is already focused on targeting its customers to get more from its existing media by extending the campaign to mobile,” he said.

Mogreet’s goal is to expand marketers reach by harnessing the four-billion-plus text messages sent each day in the United States from consumers of all ages, including adults 35-44 who now send more texts than place calls.

Mogreet’s platform has been utilized by leading brands in numerous verticals from hospitality and apparel to retail and entertainment, with four No. 1 box office film releases.

Based on our customer’s feedback, Mogreet realized that it was important for this platform to work across all top carriers and handsets.

“They’ve said to us, ‘I don’t know if my customers are largely on Verizon, T-Mobile or AT&T, I just know that I want my message to reach them,’” Mr. Citron said. “For this reason, the marketing platform was not created to be an ‘on-deck’ application, or exclusive to one of our carrier partners.

“Mogreet wanted to ensure that this platform could have scale, because marketers today and tomorrow don’t want solutions that work on one device and most can’t afford to build several different mobile applications with different operating systems,” he said.

“Mogreet has relationships with all major carriers to enable advertisers a seamless reach on over 200 million phones—the overwhelming majority of the U.S. mobile population.”