One of my bug bears is the lack of creativity in mobile marketing campaigns. About the most exciting it gets is yet another Text and Win promotion. So it’s great to see something that gets my marketing heart beating a little faster.

The on-pack mechanic invites people to register for the promotion by sms, sending in the name of their town. Then, within 24 hours they get an sms from Lucozade to get down to their ZONE (a local, named stockist) to win an iPod - first there wins.

If there isn’t a local promotion in your area, you also get a chance to go to a virtual ZONE by sms. This involves the quickest answer by sms to a series of questions. I’m sure that the response to this part will be very high.

This reminds me a lot of the promotion we ran for Reebok at ZagMe. They were opening a new store in the mall, so simply wanted to let people know where they were and build store traffic. We sent out an sms saying that the first person to enter the shop and say to the manager "I’ve been Zagged" got a free pair of Reeboks.

The first time we did this I was watching the shop with the Marketing Director. We sent the message out and waited. And waited for about 3 minutes - this felt like an awfully long time. Then there was the sound of running and about 50 people ran into the store shouting "I’ve been Zagged!!".

I realized at that moment that, if done well, LBS marketing was a very, very powerful tool. What other mechanic could you use to make people run?

Interestingly, Lucozade are also supporting the initiative with a WAP site - something that we’ll see happening more and more.

So congrats to R2S for adding a much-needed spark of creativity, fun and zest into mobile marketing. And to Lucozade for having the vision to do the unusual, rather than the safe and boring.

There’s a promotional website here.