Cereal giant Kellogg Co. is running an MMS campaign to promote interaction with its cereal brands and get people to use its recipes.

"The Big Bake" campaign is running all across Britain and Ireland. Calls-to-action on Kellogg's cereal boxes urge consumers to send in pictures of themselves cooking and enjoying recipes with their family for a chance to star in a TV or print commercial.

"Kellogg's has an innovative, forward-thinking approach in the way they run campaigns -- it's collaborative," said Gary Bury, managing director for Mediaburst, Manchester, England. "By using mobile, it takes the campaign to a broader audience and provides a wider response mechanism for people to enter, meaning people can enter using the mechanism that suits them best.

"By including mobile in the portfolio, it enables broader access and a wider appeal," he said. "It's the one device we all carry around in our pocket all the time, so the least we can do is let people enter the campaign with the device they have in their hand."

The Kellogg Company is the world's leading producer of cereal and a leading producer of convenience foods, including cookies, crackers, toaster pastries, cereal bars, frozen waffles and meat alternatives. Its global headquarters are in Battle Creek, MI. Revenues in 2008 were $12.8 billion.

Kellogg tapped Mediaburst, a mobile messaging and interactive telephony company, to provide the technology back-end for its mobile messaging initiatives.

Created in 2000, the company is the mobile campaign partner for advertising, marketing and media agencies and the supplier of messaging solutions and aggregation for businesses, developers and network operators.

Mediaburst partners with various agencies, including Blue Chip Marketing Manchester, Mag North and CPM.

Kellogg published various recipes on the backs of cereal boxes, which were placed next to the mobile call-to-action.

Kellogg's call-to-action read as follows: "Enter our competition and you and your family could star in a TV advert or in your very own local paper!

"Just send us a photo of yourselves baking something delicious with Kellogg's cereals. We'll pick the family who look like they're having the most fun! It's that easy so go on -- get baking!

"Bake (get creative in the kitchen) + snap (send us your creation) = ta-da! (you could be a star!)"

Kellogg asked consumers to text in their photo via MMS to its own dedicated short code, 53373.

The photos were judged by a panel, with the winners appearing in a TV commercial. Kellogg is still accepting photos for a spot in newspaper ads.

According to Mediaburst, Kellogg is the first brand to have a unified short code all across Britain and the Republic of Ireland.

King Tut campaign
Kellogg was a promotional partner for the Tutankhamun exhibition at the O2 in London.

Tutankhamun is a tomb of Egyptian kings found in the early ?70s in the Valley of Kings outside of Luxor, Egypt.

To activate its sponsorship, Kellogg tapped Mediaburst to run a text-to-win campaign with calls-to-action on cereal boxes urging consumers to text keyword TUT to short code 53373.

Entrants received a discount voucher for their family to see the exhibition, and they were entered in a prize drawing to win a vacation to Egypt.

Kellogg's text-to-win King Tutankhamun promotion ran across Kellogg's Kids and Gatekeeper brands, plus Kellogg's Crunchy Nut Corn Flakes, on 26 million in-store promotional packages.

Zookeeper promotion
Kellogg ran a Zookeeper promotion across all of the different Kellogg's brands available in Britain and Ireland.

The in-store campaign was featured on 22 million packs of such leading Kellogg's brands as Corn Flakes, Rice Krispies, Frosties and Coco Pops.

The campaign was designed, developed and implemented by Blue Chip Marketing and Mediaburst.
Consumers were asked to text in the keyword ZOO to the short code 53373 to receive an animal fact.

Participants received discounts on children's zoo tickets and were entered into a free prize drawing to win a zookeeper experience at their local zoo.

Zoo attendance went up as a direct result of the campaign.

Kellogg also sent consumers a link via SMS to its mobile Internet site, where they were able to download a selection of ten ringtones featuring animal noises.

Kellogg deemed the campaign a success: 35,000 people entered the text-to-win campaign, and the campaign drove 32,000 ringtone downloads.

An animal medley proved to be the most popular ringtone download in Kellogg's recent SMS-driven Zookeeper campaign, which aimed to bring people closer to the animal world.

Runners-up were roaring lions and then howling wolves ringtones.

Consumers were charged only standard network costs to access and download the ringtones.

"People were still downloading ringtones months later, which was an interesting viral proposition," Mr. Bury said. "They passed the link around to friends and family.

"We work with agencies to provide technology -- we're not a one-trick pony that only works for brands, we're a promotional partner for agencies as well," he said. "If you're running text-to-win campaigns, you need someone to provide the technology and the expertise of how to get these campaigns live, and we're a specialist in that area.

"We enable the campaigns and the connection to the networks, and we make sure that the text messages go back and forth in the correct manner."