Nissan?s luxury car brand Infiniti advertised within publishers' SMS alerts as a centerpiece of a multichannel campaign to promote the launch of its newest G Convertible.

The auto brand tapped MoVoxx to power the mobile advertising campaign and create the dedicated WAP landing page for the Infiniti G Convertible. WAP links within SMS alerts from news and business publishers such as CNBC, Reuters and CNN drove to the campaign?s landing page, which let consumers request a brochure, locate a nearby retailer, share the URL with a friend and enter the ?Own the Sky? contest to win a Bose SoundDock system.

?We were trying to bring to life the experience that you feel when you are driving an Infiniti G Convertible,? said Sara Morton, group director of strategy and digital director for Nissan and Infiniti at OMD, Los Angeles. ?Everything starts with the core and the heart of our Infiniti target audience and figuring out how they interact with media.

?Infiniti consumers are tech-savvy early-adopters who are heavy users of mobile and on the go often?they love to travel,? she said. ?We wanted to encourage folks to interact with not only the vehicle messaging and the themes of the model, but to share their experiences with us and grow with the car.

?We created a user experience that truly brought to life the themes of the vehicle, the notion of being free and inspired, and incorporate into our marketing program into how people use their devices naturally.?

Infiniti is the luxury car division of Japanese automaker Nissan Motor Co. Ltd. The Infiniti global network includes more than 230 dealers in 15 countries.

The Infiniti G is a mid-size entry-level luxury car and coupe. It is available either as a hard-top or a convertible.

Ad agency OMD is a subsidiary of Omnicom Group.

Consumers that clicked on the Infinity link within the SMS could enter the ?Own the Sky? contest, by typing in their mobile number and email address.

Consumers were then asked to send an email with their physical mailing address and a picture of the sky taken with their phone, which was then sent to them as a direct-mail postcard with the location of the nearest Infiniti dealer.

"What better way to invite consumers into a dialogue with the brand than asking them to take a picture of something that inspires them and we?ll send them a postcard in the mail of the picture you took,? Ms. Morton said. ?We weave in a conversation about our model launch.

?We have to truly understand how our target consumes media and share in that conversation,? she said. ?Hopefully this campaign inspires you to go back and take a look at our cars.?

In addition to brand engagement and generating awareness of the G Convertible product launch, Infiniti wanted to help consumers find their local Infiniti dealership in a convenient, unique way, with the ultimate goal of encouraging consumers to take a test drive and, hopefully, buy a car.

Another objective of the campaign was generating awareness and creating a connection with the target audience.

?We wanted to encourage folks to interact with our campaign to create conversations, touch consumers one more time with the direct-mail postcard in a way they didn?t expect to say thanks for sharing with us what inspires you,? Ms. Morton said. ?We?re all wrapped up in a digital age, so the postcard was a novel, interesting to touch folks in a different way.

?Having that conversation in a way that  inspires a two-way dialogue is a great way to create a connection, and it also tapped into the themes of Owning the Sky and inspired performance.?

For the Infiniti G Convertible campaign, OMG and MoVoxx collaborated with Chiat, the automotive brand?s creative agency of record.

While MoVoxx created the campaign?s landing page, Usablenet developed the general WAP site for Inifiniti USA.

In addition to SMS advertising, Infiniti has partnered with mobile ad networks such as Jumptap to promote its vehicles across the mobile Web and within applications (see story).

Looking at the post-click mobile engagement statistics for the Infiniti G Convertible campaign, MoVoxx found that quality of content matters. Premium content performed better than run-of-network content in generating clicks.

The nature of SMS is extremely viral due to ease of forwarding. In the case of the Infiniti campaign, consumers forwarding text messages with the WAP link generated 19 percent more clicks, according to MoVoxx.

SMS reminders to participate and finish completing the information form on the campaign?s WAP site brought in twice as many entries during the last week of the two-month campaign compared to the other weeks.

The SMS advertising campaign generated cost-per-lead results that were twice as efficient as the best-performing display site, and lead rates were nearly four-times better than the best-performing display site, according to MoVoxx.

The highest levels of engagement with the Own the Sky campaign came from iPhone and BlackBerry users, which represent higher-income consumers.

?The mobile space can be challenging in terms of measuring a campaign?s success,? Ms. Morton said. ?MoVoxx measures contest entries and measures performance in terms of lead requests, not only folks that opted-in to receive more messaging and continue the conversation, but actual lead requests.

?Mobile is getting more and more sophisticated, and MoVoxx helped us achieve what we wanted in terms of measurement, and they built the WAP landing page,? she said. ?The results show that ads within SMS drive higher post-click engagement than ads on a WAP page.?