How many ways to use a credit card? Visa answered that by conducting a mobile campaign to give customers a taste of the opportunities that the Visa Signature Rewards Card offers to cardholders.

Tapping interactive marketing agency AKQA for this effort, the campaign focuses on Visa's concierge and restaurant offerings. It comprises two programs, both using mobile to provide the target audience with relevant and useful information.

"This campaign is a mass-market project targeting consumers over the age of 25," said Dan Rosen, managing director of mobile for AKQA, London. "The strategy was to try an engage the consumers and to make them see the benefits of using the card in an innovative way and mobile fit the innovation bill.

"We wanted to give people an experience they hadn't had before, brought to them by the card," he said. "The good part for Visa was that the campaign promoted at the point-of-sale, which is optimal from an efficiency perspective."

The first part of the campaign was called, "Savory Sound Bite." Participating San Francisco Bay Area restaurants encouraged customers, waiting patrons and passersby to text BETE to the short code 84721.

Consumers who texted-in got a prerecorded call back from a chef. The chef gave participants insider detailers, recipes and a personal philosophy on food.

The second part carried the mobile brand experience into high-end grocery stores. Visa tapped Sonoma County vendors for their expertise on pairing foods with wines.

Users were asked to text in what they are having for dinner -- BBQ, beef, chicken, fish, lamb, pasta, pizza, pork, shellfish, cheese or chocolate -- to the short code Visa1.

Visa made that expertise available to consumers where they need it most - in store - when deciding what to buy.

The text back also included a link to a WAP site dedicated to this campaign. Visitors could get more information regarding the Rewards Card and even click-to-call and speak with a Visa representative.

In-store signage asked customers to text in what they were shopping for and in return they got food-pairing recommendations. Users could either text the food they planned to eat that day to get wine recommendations or text wines on the shelf to get food recommendations.

This campaign was meant to show the benefits of being a Visa Signature cardholder, literally putting the brands into the consumer's hand.

"The campaign exceeded Visa's expectations to the point that mobile has become a significant channel for them," Mr. Rosen said. "The WAP was meant to reinforce the benefits of the card to consumers who love to surf the mobile Web. The WAP site was our way of optimizing the mobile medium."