NEW YORK -- Mobile played a key role in sportswear brand adidas' "Basketball is a Brotherhood" campaign featuring six NBA players to promote its Team Signature footwear.

The integrated campaign, explained at the Mobile Marketing Forum yesterday, was created by interactive shop Isobar, Neighborhood America and 180LA. It included television slots, mobile marketing, print, a WAP site and banner ads on the AdMob mobile network.

"We needed to figure out how to get consumers to interact with our brand and realized that our target audience most likely has more trust in the players than in adidas," Chris Murphy, director of digital marketing for adidas USA, told a room packed with mobile marketers at this annual Mobile Marketing Association event.

"We figured out that mobile is a great way to engage consumers, but mobile should not stand alone and that's why we decided on integrating a lot of mediums," he said.

The TV commercial slots did not mention the adidas sports shoes. The commercials focused on basketball and the meaning and importance of a team and being a part of something.

There were 11 different TV slots that were shot at a summer basketball camp with 12 young players who were taught by NBA basketball stars.

The campaign stressed that basketball is like being part of a brotherhood. At the end of the commercials there was a three-second message that asked viewers to text TEAM to an adidas shortcode to get to talk to the players.

Thousands of basketball fans texted in and got a call back from a player who evangelized basketball and the meaning of being on a team. Again, the actual shoe was not promoted. The participants got several calls from various players for five weeks.

"Our next goal was to make it a two-way conversation," Mr. Murphy said.

At the end of each recorded message the NBA player asked the listener to go to the site at http://www.adidasbasketball.com.

Once on the site, basketball fans could create personalized ringtones with the voice of a player asking them to answer the phone.

Additionally, users could customize a voicemail message with their favorite player telling callers the user is not available and to leave a message.

"The recorded voice messages served as a viral marketing component," Mr. Murphy said. "When callers heard that voicemail, they very often asked their friend about it and went on to the site to create similar voicemail messages."

The print aspect of the campaign was limited to Slam magazine. The magazine printed an ad on the bottom of its cover asking readers to text ALLSTAR to an adidas short code.

"We customized the short codes for each call to action to see what started the conversation," Mr. Murphy said. "We needed to be able to know whether people were texting in because they saw the TV commercial or the print ad."

There were WAP banner ads on the AdMob mobile ad network, too. The banner ads asked users to click through to the basketball-as-a-brotherhood WAP site, which features information about the players.

"There were definitely some challenges in this campaign," Mr. Murphy said. "Garnering participation was one. Mobile let us get farther in the participation funnel than any other marketing medium.

"Sustaining participation was also a challenge," he said. "We needed to make sure that our audience was interacting with the brand and its message throughout the entire five-week campaign."