The 2011 Effective Mobile Marketing Awards Ceremony, headline-sponsored by Upstream, is less than one week away. Today, we continue our preview of the finalists in each category with a look at the entries shortlisted for the Most Effective Mobile Charity Campaign/Solution category.

The Awards Ceremony takes place in London on 3 November. If you havent yet booked your place at the event, theres still time – but tickets are selling fast. In fact, there are just 20 seats remaining. Right now though, lets take a look at the companies and campaigns vying for the honours in the Mobile Charity Campaign/Solution category, in alphabetical order.

bemoko/Macmillan Cancer Support – Macmillan Mobile Site
Macmillan Cancer Support wanted to respond to the growing shift towards content being accessed on mobile devices, but needed to keep its content accessible to as wide a mobile demographic as possible. Working with mobile agency bemoko, the charity developed a mobile web presence that offers vital resources and information for cancer patients, their families, friends, and professional carers and medical staff.
bemoko’s solution was to design a mobile site that works seamlessly with Macmillan’s main website. This means that the mobile site is supported and updated, with as little impact on the charity’s editorial processes as possible.

DIDMO/Salvation Army/GetJar – Salvation Army Daily Cup Social Justice
With this app, the Salvation Army aimed to engage with the younger, mobile demographic to highlight social justice issues, and help disadvantaged people over the course of the holiday season. DIDMO used its mobile content-creation platform, Magmito, to create the cross-platform app, while GetJar donated premium placement space on its website to promote downloads. The Salvation Army assisted with content and PR outreach.

The Daily Cup app featured a blog feed, which was regularly updated with content about the Salvation Army’s work. The app encouraged participation, with a feedback form for volunteer enquiries, and a ‘Donate $10 now’ button.
The app was downloaded 190,000 times in just six weeks, with 6.2 per cent of users clicking the ‘Donate $10 now’ button.

M&S/Oxfam/Profero – One-day Wardrobe Clearout

Digital Agency Profero partnered with 4th Screen Advertising to promote M&S and Oxfam’s ‘One Day Wardrobe Clearout’ event. The event aimed to encourage people to donate the clothes that they no longer wear to give to people who are less fortunate.

The campaign incorporated SMS, press and social media, but the mobile arm aimed to engage with iPhone-using mums. Consumers were sent an ad in the form of a calendar entry, which could then be saved to the consumer’s handset to remind them to take part in the One Day Wardrobe Clearout.  M&S offered the incentive of £5 off at their stores when you donated an item of clothing or soft furnishing.

In a week-long campaign, 24,534 women added the One Day Wardrobe Clearout event to their calendar. 400,000 items of clothing were donated, and £1m was raised for Oxfam.

National Geographic/Velti – The Last Lions
Mobile advertising firm Velti collaborated with National Geographic to drive awareness of the plummeting population of lions in the wild. The campaign aimed to promote National Geographic’s movie, The Last Lions – encouraging ticket sales using a broad range of mobile marketing and advertising.

Velti put together a comprehensive mobile campaign that included mobile media, a mobile site, SMS sweepstakes, mobile community nurturing, an iPhone application and an Android launcher.

The fully-featured mobile site enabled users to watch the trailer, find a movie theater, enter the sweepstakes, download mobile content, and post to social networks. Through the SMS mobile community and sweepstakes, users could win tickets and receive alerts and reminders about the movie.

Meanwhile, an iPhone app allowed users to place pictures of themselves into scenes from the film, and post them on Facebook and Twitter.

OpenMarket – Disasters Emergency Committee East Africa Drought Appeal
Following the drought in East Africa that left 10m people in need of food, water and emergency healthcare, OpenMarket worked with the Disasters and Emergencies Committee (DEC) to enable a SMS-based donation platform.

The solution allows consumers to donate £5 in response to the humanitarian crisis in East Africa, simply by texting one of the keywords – ‘HELP’, ‘CRISIS’, ‘AID’, ‘DONATE’, ‘HELP’, ‘SUPPORT’ or ‘AFRICA’ – to the shortcode, 70000. To date, more than £1.2m has been raised via these SMS donations since the DEC launched the Appeal in late June 2011.

OpenMarket’s CMX2 platform also allows people to opt into Gift Aid when making donations, boosting the value of those donations by 25 per cent.

Safaricom M-Pesa/Redsky – Kenyans for Kenya
Safaricom’s mobile money transfer and payment service, M-PESA, launched the Kenyans for Kenya initiative in response to the drought affecting East Africa. The campaign aimed to raise 500m Kenyan shillings (£3.2m) in four weeks to feed the 3.5m Kenyans facing starvation.

The service enabled M-PESA users to donate any amount to the cause via their mobile phone. Through partnerships with Western Union and KENTV, Kenyans around the world were able to contribute, using the simple M-PESA account number, 111 111.

The campaign achieved its target, raising 550m Kenyan shillings by 11 August. The service is still live, and continues to collect money for the cause.

There are just 20 seats left at this years Awards Ceremony. To book your place,  please email john.owen@mobilemarketingmagazine.com or telephone +44 (0) 77696 74824. Tables of 10 cost £2,050, while individual seats are priced at £225, both including a 3-course meal and unlimited drinks.

And dont forget theres a native iOS app, a hybrid Android app, and a web app for other platforms, for the event. More details on that here.