Legendary whiskey brand Jack Daniel's is targeting music fans via a mobile initiative as part of its "Backstage Parties" marketing campaign.

The whiskey brand launched a Spanish-language app promoting a series of rock concerts across Spain and Jack Daniel's "Backstage Parties." Users can compose their own songs using guitar, bass, piano and drum sounds as well as take music-related quizzes. The campaign was spearheaded by Universal McCann, while Golden Gekko developed the app.

"Jack Daniel's goal was to do something fun with mobile and promote music events that they're organizing throughout Spain," said Magnus Jern, founder/CEO of Golden Gekko, London. "In addition to the quiz and soundboard song-making feature, the app has the schedule for the tour so users can see when and where the events are and information about how to get there.

"There's also an opt-in mechanism to build a database for future mobile campaign," he said. "Since the legal drinking age in Spain is 18, the target demographic is 18-30, both men and women."

Jack Daniel's is a brand of Tennessee whiskey that is among the world's best-selling liquors. It is known for its iconic square bottles and black label.

The brand is linked to American biker culture and musicians such as Frank Sinatra, Keith Richards, Jimmy Page, Lemmy, Nikki Sixx and Slash.

Jack Daniel's promoted the Backstage application on its Web site, urging visitors to enter their age and phone number.

The whiskey brand also distributed posters with a keyword and short code call-to-action and promoted it through Bluetooth on site at several of the events.

Golden Gekko created versions of the iPhone and all Java-based handsets. There are versions for smartphones such as BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and Palm.

During the campaign period there were:
? 900 installations of the iPhone version from Spain;
? 130,000 installations of the Java version from Spain;
? About 2.5 percent opt-in registration totaling 3,000;
? 95 percent of the downloads were from app stores such as iTunes, Mobango and GetJar, and 5 percent from Web downloads and texts to the short code.

"We provide really cool apps for brands, and this was a really good collaboration with Universal McCann and Jack Daniel's," Mr. Jern said. "What we've seen is that we get 10 to 20 times more downloads from Java phones than iPhones.

"The App Store has gotten so competitive so it's hard to stand out, especially if you're an alcohol brand, because Apple doesn't promote those kinds of apps," he said.

The Jack Daniel's app has been distributed via independent mobile applications stores such as GetJar, Mobile9 and Mobango.

"Mobango is a more efficient channel than the App Store to reach out to people in those target segments, at least in the Spanish market," Mr. Jern said. "Mobango and GetJar have been very helpful, and they offer high-quality apps, which is driving traffic to their sites."

Mobango claims to have 5 million registered users generating 12 million downloads a month.

It supports all platforms except iPhone, including J2ME, Microsoft's Windows Mobile, Nokia's Symbian, Google's Android, RIM's BlackBerru, Palm and Flashlite. Nokia is the most popular handset manufacturer.

India and the U.S. are Mobango's two biggest markets, but it also has a significant presence in Italy, Spain, Britian, the Phillippines, Turkey, Europe and South America.

All applications are free. For advertising, Mobango partners with mobile ad networks such as AdMob, and also buys and sells inventory itself.

"The Jack Daniel's application got quite a decent numbers of downloads in Spain," said Vittorio Maffei, chief operating officer of Mobango, Milan, Italy. "They wanted to create a different relationship with their customers.

"Publishers and application developers that want to distribute apps use Mobango, and there is paid placement, which is clearly a good way to be the first thing customers see when they browse Mobango," he said.

"Consumers will see two or three apps in featured positions, and those are always among the most downloaded."