The client
Text-a-Monster brought together three of the biggest names in entertainment and retail: McDonald's, Disney and Pixar, promoting the cinema launch of Monsters, Inc. The mobile side, delivered through 12Snap, was reported as one of the largest retail-based SMS advertising campaigns Europe had ever seen, launching in February 2002 and running across more than a thousand locations.
As the design team at NetDecisions / Agilisys, we delivered the web and interactive creative that carried the campaign online.
The challenge
Three global brands. A blockbuster film. A fixed cinema-launch deadline. And a marketing channel, SMS, that almost nobody had built a major campaign around yet. The digital creative had to look worthy of Disney·Pixar and McDonald's, and it had to connect seamlessly to a mobile mechanic that was being invented as the campaign was built.
What we did
We designed and built the full Text-a-Monster microsite at www.textamonster.co.uk: web design, interactive development and the technical SMS integration that plugged the site into the mobile campaign. The Marketing Store led the campaign (we worked closely with them across McDonald's throughout this period) and 12snap delivered the SMS. Working alongside 12snap via Disney and McDonald's, we owned the microsite and the technical campaign build end to end.
Our approach
We designed to blockbuster brand standards at campaign pace, built the experience in the interactive technology of the moment, and treated the SMS activation as the heart of the site rather than a bolt-on promotional layer. Web, interactive and mobile worked as one campaign, not three.
Outcome
The campaign ran at national scale and is still remembered as an early landmark in retail SMS marketing in Europe. It put two marquee entertainment brands, Disney and Pixar, alongside McDonald's on a genuinely pioneering mobile activation, with our microsite as the digital front door.
Why it still matters
This was mobile-first marketing before "mobile-first" was a phrase. Decades before cross-channel became standard practice, NBM's people were already blending web, interactive and mobile into a single campaign, right at the start of the SMS era.
Awards & recognition
The campaign is recognised as a landmark in early SMS marketing. It features in Campaign's "Book of Lists: the 10 best SMS campaigns", where McDonald's first SMS campaign (the Monsters, Inc. / Text-a-Monster push) is cited as the largest retail-based SMS campaign in Europe at the time.
This is recognition for the campaign as a whole, which The Marketing Store devised and 12snap delivered. Our contribution was the web and interactive build, so the credit is shared rather than ours alone.
- The Book of Lists: the 10 best SMS campaigns (Campaign): the Monsters, Inc. campaign listed among the best SMS campaigns.
Context & coverage
Monsters, Inc. was a genuine blockbuster (the Disney·Pixar film opened in UK cinemas in early 2002), and McDonald's ran a major Happy Meal tie-in around it. The SMS mechanic, delivered via 12Snap, was reported at the time as one of the largest retail-based SMS advertising campaigns in Europe, which is striking given how new mobile marketing was. The campaign is still cited in write-ups of early SMS marketing.
- 12Snap launches monster SMS campaign (The Media Leader) and McDonald's steps up its SMS marketing (Nation's Restaurant News): the scale and significance of the SMS activation.
- Monsters, Inc. McDonald's Happy Meal promotion): the retail tie-in context.
