Reebok has launched a mobile social networking campaign to promote its Freestyle Hi model by letting targeted consumers interact with the shoe design.

The campaign is running on Gofresh GmbH's mobile social network itsmy.com. The campaign lets consumers design their own shoe and send it in to itsmy.com, share it with friends and put it in the background of their page.

"Reebok's campaign objective was to get targeted consumers to interact with the shoe," said Antonio Vince Staybl CEO of Gofresh GmbH, Munich, Germany. "People are far more likely to interact with branding elements on mobile phones than with regular Internet ads."

Reebok's mobile campaign targeted women between the ages of 16 and 30.

A graphic mobile banner ad drove consumers to a design portal within the mobile social network.

Approximately 80,000 people in Germany and Austria worked with the campaign tool to actively custom-design a Reebok Freestyle Hi shoe.

The average consumer spent 3.5 minutes using the design element and interacting with the mobile campaign.

More than 45 percent of participants saved the picture on their phone, and average participants showed their design to three or more people.

Five designs of the Freestyle Hi shoe were made available to site users as profile backgrounds.

The initial campaign was deployed in Germany and Austria.

Brands have expressed interest in running similar campaigns in the U.S.

Other prominent advertisers on itmy.com include Universal and Ford.

Ford launched an integrated mobile campaign age range to promote its Focus model.

The target demographic was consumers ages 20 to 35.

Ford's campaign allowed itsmy.com members to design their own Ford Focus with their mobile phone.

The campaign encouraged consumers to brand their sites by uploading their car designs to their page and asked them to send the pictures of their cars into Ford.

Consumers were able to upload mobile videos, which contained pre-roll Ford Focus advertising.

Itsmy.com is the second-largest mobile-only social network in the U.S., after Mocospace, and is the largest in Britain. It also has a significant presence in Spain and Italy.

Itsmy.com supports 3,500 Web-enabled handsets.

Itsmy.com is carrier independent, running off-portal on the mobile Web with more than 2.5 million mobile users, 4.5 million mobile pages containing 10 million mobile UGC-items.

Of those 2.5 million users, 1.5 million are fully registered.

Consumers can register by sending in a picture of themselves via MMS or entering their information into a form on the mobile Web site at http://m.itsmy.com, http://mobile.itsmy.com, or http://itsmy.mobi.

A complete mobile profile page will then be created for each registered consumer.

The site is free to the consumer, other than carriers' data charges

Gofresh monetizes itsmy.com through pay-per-download widgets and mobile advertising.

Gofresh is able to target consumers based on age, locations (city and country), gender and mobile device.

Itsmy.com users have an average community usage time of 52 hours per month -- an incredibly high figure for a mobile Web site.

Unsurprisingly, 70 percent of all itsmy.com users have all-inclusive unlimited data plans.

"Flat-rate unlimited data plans are really common in Europe, and after each carrier has launched a service like that, mobile Web usage explodes," Mr. Staybl said. "In the U.S. where unlimited plans are less common, viral growth is slower--two out of 10 people who received invites are joining in the U.S. versus five out of 10 in Britain.

"We're completely ready to reach the mass market in the U.S. -- everyone has a mobile phone, everyone is connected to the network, the only barrier is carrier data costs," he said. "Many people would definitely join if they knew for sure how much it would cost."

Mobile 2.0 social networking services like free homepages, personal mobile TV broadcasting and location-based services are designed to increase itsmy.com's stickiness.

Gofresh claims that itsmy.tv is the leading mobile social TV and personal mobile broadcasting service.

Mobile user-generated content and mobile social networking provider Gofresh operates with a strict mobile-Web-only vision.

Gofresh cooperates with mobile operators and key players in mobile advertising worldwide.

Gofresh describes its mobile advertising platform as a rich media mobile social ad-network.

In addition to its Munich headquarters, the company has offices in Madrid and New York.

In a survey of itsmy.com members, 64 percent of respondents said they have bumped into someone or fell over something while they were surfing the mobile Internet.

"We want to get the attention of people using the mobile Internet, because people are surfing the mobile Web everywhere -- it's a really big phenomenon -- and they're not paying much attention to what's around them," Mr. Staybl said.

"Nobody really understands the impact to the economy, but consumers who spend 50-plus hours a month on one site is a great opportunity for brands," he said.