Handset maker LG Electronics MobilComm USA's second annual National Texting Championship sends fingers flying to win the title of America's fastest texter.

In its second year running, LG's National Texting Championship challenges the speed of text message users in targeted communities such as Los Angeles, New York, Atlanta, Chicago, Houston, Miami, Dallas and San Diego.

"One of the goals of the campaign was to generate interest and engagement with consumers to join the contest and play," said David Spear, executive vice president at LSN Mobile Technologies, Atlanta.

The contest began June 10 with the Regional Qualifiers. Winners of that round will advance to the National Online Texting Competition June 18, after which winners compete in the SMS Wild Card Challenge June 19-25.

The fourth round on June 24 was broadcasted as a two-minute television micro-event on MTV's "A Shot at Love 2: Happy Hour," which is the reunion show for that season. Finally, the last round is to be held in New York on July 9 with a live LG venue text-off.

In phases one and two of the competition, LG asked people to visit the site at http://www.lgtexter.com via radio broadcasting. The site displayed a count-down informing participants when they could text the phrase they needed to enroll in the competition.

Then, the electronics and appliance manufacturer also asked people to sign up for phase three, in which LG would push an alert phrase via SMS to all opted-in players' phones, asking them to text back the exact phrase as quickly as possible.

In this phase, LG used LSN's Local Wireless mobile ad network to deploy an interactive advertising campaign to promote the contest via mobile messaging.

The message asks, 'Are you the Fastest Texter? Down & Dirty; Battle on the Qwerty! Compete to Win up to $50,000!'

The first contestant in each pool who sends an error-free message advances to the next round. The message is processed and delivered simultaneously on the LSN server. The winner of the final round in New York receives a $50,000 prize.

Sponsors LG and ad agency Fathom Communications used LSN's SMS application platform to promote the contest and provide service for contestants.

LSN maintains local mobile ad networks and provides mobile marketing technology services including text messaging delivery and interactive mobile marketing campaigns. The company delivers local TV news content, in both English and Spanish, to an estimated 200 million mobile users worldwide.

"LSN played a strategic role in using its Local Wireless Mobile Ad Network to generate awareness and gain opt-in sign-up directly from people's mobile phones," Mr. Spear said.

"It's great to see an innovator like LG use SMS text messaging in a unique, differentiated manner to drive brand awareness and consumer participation for the texting contest," he said "The pervasiveness of text allows any company or brand to engage a large and growing text-savvy audience."