Levi Strauss & Co. and J. C. Penney Company Inc. have added mobile components to their national "Tuition" campaign to drive consumer participation.

Levi's and JCPenney teamed up with the Today Show iPhone application, which was built by Zumobi. Ads within the application encourage consumers to click to enter to win one of two $50,000 college scholarships.

"Levi's and JCPenney's national promotion is giving away $50,000 in college tuition, and if you look at the cost of education today, this is offer has tremendous appeal," said Cindy Spodek Dickey, vice president of marketing at Zumobi, Seattle.

Consumers that click on the ad within the Today Show application are routed to a page where they can learn more about the nationwide campaign and enter to win via a sweepstakes form.

Additionally, consumers can enter the sweepstakes by sending the keyword TUITION to short code 36638.

An additional entry form is available at http://www.levistuition.com by clicking on the "Share the Wealth Sweepstakes" icon.

At the sweepstakes registration Web page, participants will be required to provide their name, age and complete mailing address in order to enter online.

In addition to this sweepstakes, Levi's and JCPenney put together an additional sweepstakes offer of $20,000 towards tuition. This sweepstakes prize is only being offered at http://www.levistuition.com/todayshow.

Levi's is not new to the mobile space.

The denim giant's Dockers San Francisco brand ran mobile ads in Pandora's much BlackBerry application.

Dockers San Francisco was the premiere sponsor of the launch of the BlackBerry application (see story).

Levi's is also responsible for one of the most memorable mobile advertising campaigns and the world's very first shakable ad unit.

Levi's Dockers San Francisco brand created the first interactive "shakable" mobile advertisement within a custom-built ad network of iPhone applications.

By combining the reach of an ad with the popularity of mobile apps, Dockers used the iPhone's motion-sensitive functionality in a new advertising channel to interact with mobile consumers and engage them with the Dockers brand (see story).

The ad ran in applications such as iBasketball, iGolf, iBowl and i.TV.

JCPenney is also a mobile veteran.

The company launched its "Schooled in Style: Smart Looks for Less" multichannel campaign for the 2009 back-to-school season. Guess which marketing channels are being used.

The campaign combines mobile, digital, social and traditional media such as events. The mobile aspect lets teens sign up to receive text messages on their mobile phones about back-to-school sales and special offers at JCPenney (see story).

"The mobile channel worked well for this type of promotion because of the demographic that the brands were trying to reach matched up well to the demographic of the Today Show app users," Ms. Dickey said.