Move over iPhone porn - Sports Illustrated has gone mobile with JAGTAG

JAGTAG has an interesting deal going with Sports Illustrated. The idea is this - you take a shot of a JAGTAG mobile barcode that appears in Sports Illustrated, and you send it to a shortcode. In return, you get pics of Sports Illustrated swimwear models sent back to you. Simple!

The spread in SIs June 29th issue contains the JAGTAG. JAGTAG is slightly different from other mobile barcode providers in that it doesn’t require a reader or a web-enabled phone. It’s all done via MMS. So long as you have a cameraphone, you can use JAGTAG. So for the price of one MMS, Sports Illustrated will send you 7 - 14 swimwear pics in a single MMS.

From Sports Illustrated:

“The iconic images of memorable models—Cheryl Tiegs stepping out of a lagoon wearing that fishnet one-piece in 1978, anyone?—have at times been supplemented with spreads on athletes such as Danica Patrick, Gabrielle Reece and Serena Williams, and player wives like Ingrid Vandebosch (Jeff Gordon) and Debbie Clemens… Similarly, SI.com continues to expand its swimsuit content with pictures and other model-related media that did not appear in the magazine: extensive photo galleries, on-site videos (the bodypainting of Brooklyn Decker, for example) and candid seaside interviews.

What do you get when you add the new images to the classic ones? SI.com/vaultswimsuit. It’s all there.”

What we think?

I presume that this represents Sports Illustrated dipping its toe in the mobile water. If it gets a good response from this campaign, who knows how far it will go? SI announced a mobile content publishing deal with Action Engine last year (although Action Engine has since been bought up by Mobui). If it continues to push towards mobile, we could even see smartphone apps start popping up. I can only imagine a modestly-priced app containing a full archive of SI swimwear shots would sell pretty well!

This release also showcases a capability of JAGTAG that I hadn’t noticed before. Since their server can pick up details about your phone (like its model) from your MMS, the MMS you receive back will be slightly optimised. That’s where the “7 - 14″ pics comes in; you get as many pics as your device can handle.