How can you use your mobile and a packet of koala-shaped biscuits to read your fortune?

You can if you live in Japan! Confectionary manufacturer Lotte have teamed up with marketing company Index to create a unique fortunetelling service for their popular chocolate-filled koala biscuit snack. Each biscuit is decorated with a cartoon koala and in total there are 217 designs. To have your fortune told, all you do is choose a koala, take a picture with your cameraphone and send it as an attachment from your phone’s email address. An image recognition server recognises the design and sends a return email containing the fortune reading for that particular koala (in the example below the koala represents financial good fortune!).

The email you receive also includes an invitation to join the official koala biscuit community on Gocco. Gocco is a mobile only social networking site and is the biggest in Japan with over 350,000 members.

This is one of the most unique ways of extending brand presence to the mobile that I've seen and it looks like it would be great fun to try out.

Official press release