Brands that are advertising during the Super Bowl can compete for a free chance to incorporate mobile into their existing campaign plans.

Mobile marketing agency Blumo is making all Super Bowl advertisers eligible to win free campaign development and execution services. The Blumo team will select one brand to get the free mobile marketing campaign and will lead the advertiser and their agency through the complete development and execution of the campaign.

"We are offering advertisers the opportunity to include a mobile call-to-action in their TV spots during the Super Bowl for free," said Sean Bartlett, vice president of sales and marketing for Blumo, Phoenix, AZ. "Brands always talk about ROI, metrics and the importance of tracking marketing spend, and the way to do that is via mobile.

"Our strategy is to use this as a catalyst to get big brands to think about mobile more seriously, and it's a way to draw attention to the surprising lack of a mobile component in many of these TV ads," he said.

Blumo first announced the offer in the third week of December.

"Every year is the year of mobile, and we really wanted to start off '09 by making as much of a splash as we could," Mr. Bartlett said. "During the Super Bowl, tens of millions of people are transfixed to their TV, paying attention to the commercials, so it made the most sense for us to reach out to advertisers at this time."

The advertiser will be able to choose from various mobile marketing services, including auto response, digital collateral, mobile coupons, ringtones, wallpapers, trivia, voting, text to win, store locators or any custom mobile deliverable.

"We're offering basic branding executions," Mr. Bartlett said. "For example an auto manufacturer promoting a new car by letting consumers text to get more info or find a local dealer or a travel destination letting consumers request a travel guide via mobile, or an SMS poll asking about consumers' favorite commercials during the Super Bowl."

Blumo's clients include Toyota, Capcom, Checker Auto Parts, Chevron, NBC Universal, Luxor Las Vegas, Arizona State University, Scottsdale Convention & Visitors Bureau, State Farm Insurance and MillerCoors.

The Super Bowl is the championship game of the National Football League. It is the most-watched television event in the U.S.

Super Bowl XLIII will take place on Sunday, Feb. 1, in Tampa Bay, FL.

The Super Bowl is met with eager anticipation each year as tens of millions of viewers tune in for the game and an equal number watch for the commercials.

Without a doubt, there is no other day of the year in which virtually the entire target audience of every marketer in the country has assembled itself and is eager to digest five hours of marketing messages.

According to Nielsen, 97.5 million people watched the 2008 Super Bowl. it can be assumed that many carried mobile phones in their pocket.

Advertisers spend millions of dollars to produce their commercials and for air time. Yet little has changed throughout the decades of advertising.

The Super Bowl is still a broadcast on ABC and with so much competition for awareness, expecting someone to remember the message hours or days later is wishful thinking for the majority that fail to cut through the clutter.

A much more prudent and measurable execution is to allow people to engage with the message in real time and take an action that leads them towards the goals of the marketer.

The obvious vehicle for such an interaction is mobile.

That's why Blumo chose to offer all advertisers running national television commercials the opportunity to integrate a mobile marketing campaign with their commercial during the 2009 Super Bowl.

"We want to show the power of mobile, because there's been a lot of misinformation and lack of educations among large brands and agencies regarding what can be done with mobile," Mr. Bartlett said.

"From dealer and store locators and the ability to request information to click-to-call an 800-number and click-to-buy something on the spot, mobile offers incredible opportunities," he said. "We want to expand brands' knowledge of what can be done with mobile.

"The cost is insignificant compared to what's being spent on Super Bowl ads."

If nothing else, this offer is a savvy marketing tactic that should get some attention - or draw the ire of mobile marketing firms who detest such freebies for devaluing the channel.

Blumo's Mr. Bartlett claims that it is all about education, however.

"True knowledge of how to plan and execute campaigns -- true mobile marketing strategy -- is lacking in big brands," Mr. Bartlett said. "We're not talking about using as mobile as a one-time promotional opportunity, but rather building it into all of a brand's product launches and then remarketing to those consumers for future product launches.

"Brands should consider everything from mobile apps and a mobile Web site to SMS campaigns and mobile advertising," he said. "The industry as a whole hasn't done a good job of explaining that to marketers and agencies."