Mobile video start-up Mogreet Inc. is delivering Paramount Digital Entertainment's movie messaging service, VooZoo Mobile, via MMS.

The Movie Messages are from classic films and recent releases including The Godfather, School of Rock, Mean Girls, Clueless, South Park -- Bigger, Longer & Uncut, Jackass 2.5, Grease, Tropic Thunder, Nacho Libre and The Love Guru. In June 2008, Mogreet ran a promotion for the movie The Love Guru, which began prior to the film's release in both the U.S. and Britain.

"Mogreet offers a broad range of messages that appeal to all demographics, young and old, and every type of personality and emotion," said Mitch Feinman, general manager of Mogreet, Venice Beach, CA. "Consumers -- in particular, fans of the film's hilarious cast -- were rewarded with a sneak peek at some of the most memorable lines from the movie, along with a fun new way to convey everyday messages."
"Mogreets" are mobile video greeting cards that consumers personalize with text.

The Love Guru Mogreets included scenes from the movie that were turned into messages such as, "I Love You", "Bad Day?", "Stay Away!", "Wanna Go Out" and "Oops!".

"The response to this campaign was impressive -- both to us and to our largest distribution partner, AT&T," Mr. Feinman said. "We sent an SMS message to more than 5,000 AT&T customers informing them to check out the new Love Guru clips featured on their new multimedia messaging storefront, and 45 percent clicked through the link, and of that 45 percent, 25 percent sent at least one Mogreet.

"Across the board, the numbers are impressive and prove the viral nature of the product," he said.

In the United States, more than 3,000 The Love Guru Mogreets were sent during the time it was featured on both http://www.mogreet.com and on the AT&T Multimedia Storefront.

Building on the success of this campaign, Mogreet entered into a similar promotion with the movie Tropic Thunder, released in theatres August 13th, 2008.

Mogreet's WAP site is at http://wap.mogreet.com.

"Our goal is to create an entirely new way for people to communicate," Mr. Feinman said. "We want to make it fun and simple for people to express themselves using video.

"We also want to enable great content to reach the text messaging masses and to that end, we work closely with talented content creators of all sizes and best-in-class distribution partners," he said.

Mogreet has also announced a series of relationships with leading wireless carriers in the U.S. and British markets for on-deck placement of its line of mobile video messages.

In addition to on-deck partnerships with AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint and Alltel, the company now offers off-deck access on all the major U.S. carriers and on 3 and T-Mobile in Britain.

The partnerships extend Mogreet's reach to more than 200 million customers and ensure interoperable delivery of its content across all carriers.

"Carrier support is necessary for Mogreet to succeed," Mr. Feinman said. "If you send or receive text messages, you can send or receive a Mogreet."

When you send a Mogreet, the charge is added to your mobile phone bill, making it unnecessary to enter credit card information.

Depending on the carrier, recipients may need a data plan to receive the Mogreeet video message.

"Being on-deck with the carriers makes it even easier for people to send Mogreets, but it's also very easy to send a Mogreet from our Web site or WAP site -- and for this service, every carrier is on board, which means every time you send a Mogreet to a new recipient, you can rest assured that person will receive the message," Mr. Feinman said. "Until now, that kind of assurance was not possible."

The company has noticed that the mobile ecosystem has continued to evolve.

"Up until 2007, our business could not have existed," Mr. Feinman said. "Now, with the major mobile operators enabling interoperable messaging, combined with the hundreds of millions of video-enabled phones in the marketplace, the environment for Mogreet is both highly successful and ubiquitous."

There are Mogreets for every occasion -- birthdays, holidays, special events, flirting, make-ups/break-ups, call me, love you and I'm sorry.

"Mogreet is also seeing the impact of special occasion promotions," Mr. Feinman said. "We have run promos in conjunction with Mother's Day, Father's Day, Graduation, and we're currently running a USC football promo with team-inspired messages."

The product marries the engagement of video with the personalization of text, targeting the teen/12-17 demographic that drove the uptake of SMS in the U.S. market.

"The teen demographic is clearly driving use of mobile content and services, as they largely comprise the $62 billion global text messaging industry," Mr. Feinman said. "With this audience actively using our product, Mogreet has the potential to do for MMS what reality voting shows on television did for SMS adoption."

Mogreets are delivered by MMS where available, or as an attachment to a SMS text message.

With more than 3,000 mobile video greetings in its library, Mogreet offers an array of choices from animation and user-generated content to high profile celebrities and movie clips.

Mogreet has relationships with several top-tier content partners, including Paramount Digital Entertainment, leading online video site Break.com and Manga powerhouse Tokyopop, whose titles include Princess Ai and Bizenghast.

Other advertisers on the WAP portal include Motorola, Famous Frames Mobile Interactive and Ripe TV.
Mogreet is not currently selling advertising inventory on http://www.mogreet.com.

A number of celebrities have recorded original lines of Mogreets, including former 'N Sync star Lance Bass, R&B artist Sean Kingston, reality-TV star Tila Tequila, the Olly Girls from the cast of Sunset Tan and Mona Love, the animated alter ego of Jennifer Love Hewitt.

"Mogreet is talent and artist-friendly and its focus on the talent will help to differentiate our brand in the marketplace," Mr. Feinman said. "All of our content creators embed widgets on their personal or corporate Web sites enabling their affinity networks and fans to be exposed to and send Mogreets directly from these pages."

Mogreet compresses video files to 100K or less, which it claims makes transmission of the message effective and reliable.

Currently, Mogreets can be sent in one of three ways: from the company's Web site at http://www.mogreet.com; directly from a mobile device, now available through Alltel Celltop phones or the AT&T Multimedia Storefront; and through "video greetings" applications on Facebook and MySpace.

The company is in the process of executing two Facebook applications featuring "Birthday" and "Love & Relationship" messages.

Mogreet is branding and distributing its product through wireless carrier relationships, handset OEM channels and social networks.

The company is compliant with the Mobile Marketing Association's guidelines for premium text messaging by asking a first-time recipient to opt-in in order to receive the content.

Prices range from free ad-supported mobile greetings to premium content priced at $0.99 per message.
Subscription-based pricing models are in development.

In the summer of 2008, AT&T sponsored the Warped Tour, which was headlined by bands like Cobra Starship, Everytime I Die and Angels & Airwaves.

Each of these bands created their own Mogreets, which Mogreet heavily promoted on site.

At each of the 46 events, AT&T had a large booth with laptops linked to Mogreet's Warped Tour site, where brand ambassadors were connecting consumers to the product and teaching them how to send Mogreets.

Mogreet was also featured on The Warped Tour site, which directed consumers to mogreet.com.

"The take-up rate was great, which goes to show that people love Mogreets when they see them!" Mr. Feinman said.