When Miami-based Power 96 FM commissioned HipCricket for a mobile campaign, the radio station never even dreamed of having more than 4 million listeners interact with the brand.

HipCricket created the "High School Spirit" contest, asking students to to text their high school code to a short code. The school with the most entries would host a once-in-a-lifetime concert with Plies, Colby O'Donis and Pleasure P.

"The radio station looking to interact with its listeners and build a database of VIP listeners to have an ongoing dialogue with," said Jeff Hasen, chief marketing officer, HipCricket, Kirkland, WA.

"This concert idea has been done around the country, but this was the largest in terms of numbers and it speaks to the popularity of the artists, the competitiveness of high school students and the power of mobile and the ability to tap into what folks are doing with their mobile phones," he said.

The contest was communicated via the radio station. As students texted their entries, they received a text back asking them to join the radio station's VIP club.

The promotion enabled Power 96 FM to nearly double its mobile database.

Each participating high school in the Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties was assigned a keyword for the 25-day contest that ended in late April.

Students and others could text as many times as they wanted to the station's short code. In just over four weeks, Power 96 received 4,161,644 votes via text message.

Coral Reef Senior High won the performance by Plies, Colby O'Donis and Pleasure P.

The VIP club is basically the user opting in for valuable information that the radio station has to offer, like special programming and guest stars. Users can text stop to the shortcode to opt out of the VIP club.

"Once users are part of the VIP club they get exclusive mobile content and updates," Mr. Hasen said.

"Also, they are driven to the Web to answer questions in terms of interest so that the updates we send are personalized and specific to each listener," he said.