With video games and text messaging, regional chain Church’s Chicken is going after a young urban market. The video game promotion, a sweepstakes giving away copies of the “Afro Samurai” game with a game console, a $7,500 check and other goodies for the grand prize winner, runs until Feb. 22 and should be right in line with the young-adult demographic Church’s is trying to reach. Actually they ran an in-store promotion last year for another title in the Namco Bandai “Soul” series of fighting games and drove good traffic numbers to their Web site.

It’s the mobile contest that will follow the “Soul Samurai: Livin’ Large” game that interests me most, because it will let the company raise its profile among that demographic while at the same time learning more about what they like once they come in the door.

The Church’s “Be Heard” text messaging promotion will begin on Feb. 23, after the “Afro Samurai” campaign has ended, and will continue until April 26. Consumers will see an in-store sign giving them a short code to send a text message to. Once there, they will answer four questions about the recent Church’s experience that led them to see the sign. Answer those four questions, and they get a bounce-back mobile coupon for their next visit to one of Church’s 1,625 U.S. stores, located mostly in the south and west.

They also get entered into a weekly drawing for a $1,000 cash prize that will continue through the nine-week campaign. Grand prizes also include a unique “Be Heard” poster designed by artist Kadir Nelson and a manuscript of an original inspirational poem by R&B singer Musiq Soulchild.

The range of rewards will make the campaign more meaningful to consumers, says Church’s director of marketing services Jennie Hong. “You’re not just texting in to get a coupon, you’re getting the chance to win cash and this great customized poster,” she says. “From our perspective, we’re getting them to answer some simple questions about their in-store visit, which is very powerful data for us.”

What kind of questions can you ask—or more importantly answer—in a text message? After all, many phone plans limit users to 160 characters in text message. That’s why they call it “short” message service.

Church’s has split the questions to be asked into two sets, running one for the first month of the “Be Heard” promotion and another for the second. “We launched our first value menu earlier this year, so for the first period we’ll ask if they ordered something from our value menu,” says Hong. “If they say yes, we’ll ask if they ordered more than one item off that menu.”

Respondents who text into the promotion during the second month will be asked if the server who waited on them did suggestive selling on additional foods or Coke drinks when they placed their order, or if they were asked about upsizing any part of their order.

The questions are intentionally framed for yes/no replies, and the approach of focusing on the new 99-cent menu choices and then the sales experience over the life of the promotion is meant to keep the process as short and hassle-free as possible for participants, while still giving Church’s the feedback it wants.

“With the downturn in the economy, we felt it was important to introduce a value menu,” Hong says. “And because it’s fairly new to us, we wanted to get some additional feedback on the rollout. We wanted to understand if it’s part of their choice when they use our restaurants.”

Hong says this will be Church’s first systemwide text-messaging promotion, although the company did test small-scale SMS campaigns in some local markets last year.

As for the “Afro Samurai: Livin’ Large” promotion, it’s not like Church’s won’t get anything from that, of course. For one thing, the campaign is expected to raise the brand’s awareness among the young urban consumers.

That’s especially true since game maker Namco Bandai was promoting the game prior to its January launch with TV spots that drove interested customers to its Web site, where they were exposed to branding for the Church’s promotion. And online entry for the “Livin’ Large” contest will also help build Church’s house list, since entrants are asked to opt in to receive news and offers from both the chain and Namco Bandai.

Speaking while the “Afro Samurai” promotion was still running, Hong said the campaign has so far been even more popular than the “Soulcalibur IV” one run last year.

And that’s saying a lot. According to an official company statement, that previous video game campaign resulted in 17,300 online sweepstakes entries, with almost 20% opt-in for news and offers from Church’s. Meanwhile, the game campaign bumped traffic to Church’s Web site by about 30% and helped bulk up its value combo sales.

Games should deliver even better for Church’s this time, says Hong, because of the cross-promotions with Namco. Not only was the game Web site linking to the Church’s “Afro Samurai: Livin’ Large” sweepstakes, but Namco was promoting the contest in the newsletter it mails out regularly to its large house list of game fans.

“For example, on an average day, Web traffic to our sites usually runs around 3,000 hits,” says Hong. “But on the second day of the ‘Afro Samurai’ campaign, traffic was already up to 7,000 hits for the day. It will taper off as we get further into the promotion, but the first week has been very busy.”