On December 3, 1992, the world’s first SMS was sent over the Vodafone network. Vodafone employee Richard Jarvis received the message at a Christmas party: „Merry Christmas” were the words that started a revolution in modern communications. The transmission of the short message almost three decades ago was a key moment in the history of mobile communications technology. It was only seven years after the first SMS was sent over the Vodafone network that it finally became possible to send short messages over multiple networks. This accelerated their use and popularity enormously.

Our client, Vodafone, wanted to demonstrate its innovation in the trending topic of NFT. We developed the idea to release the first SMS as an NFT for Christmas almost 30 years later and do some good with it.

As CEO Hannes Ametsreiter said: "The mother of all messaging services is going under the hammer. With this auction, we are uniting the pioneering spirit of two centuries. We immortalize the world’s first SMS on the blockchain and auction its glad tidings as NFT for a good cause.”

By creating an NFT picturing the very first SMS sent, Vodafone was positioned as the pioneer the company is. The non-fungible token combined the pioneer spirit of two centuries, showing the progress made over the years.

We generated the world's first SMS as an NFT and auctioned it on Dec. 21, 2021, at the Aguttes auction house in Paris which is known for its international art and luxury market. The NFT was sold for a total of 107,000 euros. The money was donated to the United Nations Refugee Agency UNHCR.

Vodafone auctioning the first SMS NFT was featured in over 2000 media articles across the European markets. The campaign was reported worldwide and generated a total media volume of 4,000,000 euros. Vodafone’s first ever NFT had over 507k impressions on Group LinkedIn and Twitter, 75 Clippings and over 4,500 mentions across social media -mostly Twitter. Thus, 29 years after the first SMS, Vodafone was once again able to establish itself as a first mover and a real piece of contemporary history in the NFT market.