McDonald’s in SMS movie deal

McDonald’s is to run its first SMS (text messaging) campaign – a tie in with the UK opening of Disney’s hit movie “Monsters, Inc.”.

The mobile specialist 12snap, which has created the campaign alongside promotions agency The Marketing Store, claims it will be “the largest retail-based mobile marketing campaign ever carried out in Europe.”

Breaking on February 8 and running for four weeks, it includes all 1,200 McDonald’s restaurants in the UK. Millions of French fries boxes will have a “Monsters, Inc.” peel-off door revealing one of six characters from the film, next to a special code and a text-in number. Consumers should receive an immediate reply text letting them know if they have won a prize.

Prizes include 500 widescreen TVs, 2,000 DVD players, 5,000 MP3 players, 1,000 Toy Story DVD box sets and 370,000 ring-tones and logos.

Anne de Kerckhove, managing director of 12snap, says: “This project is a huge leap forward for the mobile medium.”

The promotion is supported in restaurants, with nationwide TV ads and online at textamonster.co.uk, which goes live on February 8.