By James Citron

As the old adage goes, less is more. Well, that certainly is not the case when it comes to MMS. 

With MMS ? short hand for Multimedia Messaging ? the 160-character constraint of SMS does not apply. Marketers can send an accompanying text message that is not road-blocked at 160 characters. This is a little known fact of MMS.  

With SMS, marketers routinely engage in all sort of natural and, often times, unnatural abbreviations to fit their message into 160 characters. You have seen this SMS messages such as this:

?Come 2 Tony?s Pizza @ Main Mall. This wk only, $2 off pep & mush pizza.  See u there. Msg&Data rates may apply. Reply HELP for info. Reply STOP to end.?

Marketers do this with SMS because they must, but also know that this is not a ?healthy? way to communicate.

By simply adding an image or video to the message, it becomes MMS, and the 160-character limitation is history. The net result is a message that is understood and positively received by the consumer.

Character flaw
We are all familiar with the standard SMS message approach ? you have 160 characters, including spaces and punctuation, to convey your message to the consumer. Thank God for Microsoft Word?s ?Word Count? function.

This can often be like trying to fit your entire wardrobe into a carry-on bag ? you are going have to leave a lot out. Now imagine this bag can expand to whatever size you need it to be ? that would be MMS. 

By adding an image or video to your text ? which, in and of itself, is probably a good idea, by the way ? marketers can communicate in MMS and have the ability to fully articulate their message, brand, product, call-to-action and anything else they would like to convey.

MMS is revolutionizing the way we can express ourselves in mobile messaging, because the message can now include multi-media and because the accompanying text message is not capped at 160 characters.

With MMS brands are no longer forced to character-crunch their message.

A terrific use case for this is banking and pharmaceutical companies whose marketing communications typically include required disclaimers. No way they could do this with 160 characters. 

As well, movie studios can now include movie credits and reviews when promoting a new movie trailer. And fashion brands have more characters to entice us with their brand ethos while capturing our immediate attention with a video of the latest runway looks. 

Get the picture?
With 5 billion MMS messages sent per month nationwide as of the fourth-quarter of 2009, MMS can no longer be ignored by marketers looking to communicate with new and existing customers through mobile marketing.

Insofar as advertising is akin to story telling, being free to tell the story is a good thing. More is more.

James Citron is CEO of Mogreet, Venice, CA. Reach him at .