Carrickfergus-based company Sugarcube have won a contract with Siemens Mobile to produce a mobile phone text marketing promotion for the Cricket World Cup in South Africa.

Sugarcube, an Invest Northern Ireland client company, specialising in Wireless marketing (SMS) solutions, has developed the Guess’n’Win competition for Siemens, one of the main sponsors of the 2003 World Cup. The text competition uses audio and graphics and is being run via the Fox Sports Satellite TV Network across the Middle East.

Up to 17 million subscribers throughout the region, including Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Pakistan, Kuwait, Jordan and the UAE, are being invited to guess the World Cup finalists, and eventual winner, to win the latest Siemens mobile handsets.

Over 150 direct response TV commercials are being transmitted, with viewers asked to text a reply. Sugarcube will be managing the full technical implementation from Northern Ireland.

Errol Maxwell, Sugarcube’s Managing Director, said: “Our marketing effort in the Gulf has benefited enormously from the knowledge and contacts of the Invest NI team there.

“We are a new media company with expertise in short messaging technology for mobile telephony that is increasingly attracting major telecommunications companies, particularly in the Arabian Gulf and South East Asia where mobile phone usage is very strongly,” he added.

The Carrickfergus company, set up by in 1999, currently employs seven people full time. The Middle East market was recently opened up for the company as the result of winning a sizeable contract to provide duel language text messaging technology for Nokia to run the ‘Nokia Race’ in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, Jordan and Oman.

The company has also supplied text promotion services clients such as Nokia, Virgin and British American Tobacco in 10 countries throughout the Middle East.

(GMcG)