The Joy of Text

JUSTIN LEYTON/NETWORK for TIME

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Mobile phones may seem an odd way to sell underwear. But shoppers responded when Gossard, a lingerie company owned by the Sara Lee Corporation, began using a mobile short messaging service (SMS) — those little text messages that show up on your cell phone — to promote its new line of G-strings in the U.K. "It was a huge success," says Shaeren McKenzie, Gossard's London-based marketing director. "We reached our eight-month sales target in eight weeks."

The Gossard campaign was based on a television commercial that urged viewers who wanted a 1 discount on a G-string to send...

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