Tammy goes interactive with The Sims
Cultural phenomenon meets high street fashion
November 2002: Tammy, one of the UK's leading high street fashion retailers for teenage girls is to run its first interactive SMS (text messaging) prize draw this month. Tammy has joined forces with Electronic Arts (EA), the world's leading interactive entertainment software company, for the UK wide in-store promotion which it predicts will attract more than 50,000 entries. Mobile applications and services specialist, mkodo, is providing the SMS capability for the campaign.
The promotion focuses on creation of an interactive campaign for the Tammy customer. During the promotion, 500,000 in store flyers will offer customers the opportunity to win a VIP pass for The Sims Day Out. To enter, customers are invited to text their name to a number published on the flyer. All entrants can win a The Sims picture message if they have the mobile to support this. One winner and friend, together with a guardian, will be selected for the VIP day out, which includes a visit to the Tammy Oxford Street store to pick out an outfit, a VIP lunch, chauffeur driven transport and then, to top it all, a fantastic visit to the Smash Hits TV studio to meet the guys behind The Sims cartoon strip.
EA GAMES hugely popular PC game, The Sims, allows players to create a neighbourhood of simulated people known as Sims and control their lives. It's been described as a universal gaming and cultural phenomenon and is the world's biggest-selling PC game of all time.
Jae Ewington, Promotions Manager Tammy, sees the initiative as one that could pave the way for future interactive promotions, Tammy has joined in partnership with Electronic Arts to create an interactive, fun promotion which fits with both target audiences. The use of SMS is a logical way of getting our audience's attention and getting them to respond quickly to the prize draw. Text messaging is a particularly popular way of communicating among teenage girls and the interactive nature of text messaging appeals to them. It is a very good fit with both brands and a great opportunity to engage our customers.
EA's Stuart Lang said: The Sims is a unique phenomenon in the world of interactive entertainment, with appeal which transcends gender and age boundaries. The game has a huge following amongst teenage girls and an SMS initiative, with one of the UK's leading teen-girl fashion retailers, is a fantastic way of communicating with a key demographic for The Sims.
mkodo's applications and services ensure that the process is completely automatic with no manual intervention required after the initial campaign set up. Our system handles the inbound text entries, immediately sends out appropriate outbound responses, in this case sending either picture message or text response, and selects winner and runners up at random, delivering names and details to the campaign owners. It's a very simple, fast and cost-effective way of running a competition with little administrative overhead, says Stuart Godfree of mkodo.
Electronic Arts, EA SPORTS, EA GAMES, EA SPORTS BIG and The Sims are trademarks or registered trademarks of Electronic Arts Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries. EA.COM is a service mark of EA.com Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
