The author, Jarod Reyes, shares his accidental discovery of creating a "branded SMS" using Twilio's MMS service. He explains that by sending an MMS with a custom image that resembles a standard text message, but includes a logo, it creates the illusion of a branded SMS. The process involves creating an image template in Illustrator and hosting it at a public URL, then using Twilio's REST API to send the MMS. The author provides a simple example of how this can be done in Ruby/Sinatra, and encourages others to experiment with customizing their SMS messages and exploring new possibilities for hacking the SMS interface.