Joey Called This Morning

Of the hundreds of advertising campaigns I worked on over my five decade career, this one probably made the most massive impact over the shortest period of time.

We learned in ethnographic research that long distance callers heard an “invisible time clock” ticking in their heads, which even interfered with their intentions of making calls. That was because LD calling was charged by both duration and distance. We needed to find a way to lower this perceptual barrier.

The previous campaign, “The Next Best Thing To Being There,” unintentionally raised the barrier. It amplified realizations that in-person contact is the best thing, even though family and friends may be separated by big geographical distances that prevent contact.

The magic word that unlocked the solutions to the puzzle was “touch.”

Colloquially, people were long used to saying to each other “let’s stay in touch.” This expression conveys deep human needs to maintain connections with those who matter. The word touch implies an instant connection even without close physical proximity. Even more importantly, the emotional benefits of “touch” are … well … touching. Powerful motivational messages could leap to life from this conceptual wellspring.

This potential was sparked by starting with a call-to-action preceding touch: “Reach Out.” It’s as if there’s no distance between the person calling and the person answering.

This insight led to print ads showing both the caller and the receiver on the same page. And copy featured ordinary incidents of daily life that continually nourish relationships. People didn’t need to wait for “big news” when they really just wanted to stay in touch.

TV spots could even feature only the people who receive calls, to demonstrate how much they meant emotionally to the receiver. One of the best is famed as “Joey Called.” Feast your eyes and ears on this masterpiece. It still deeply connects with hearts and minds.

For measurement of campaign effectiveness, market share was not the issue, because Bell System was a government-regulated monopoly. However, volume and duration of LD calls could be compared in matched A/B markets (with/without advertising presence of this campaign) to assess its impact. The effects were phenomenal, both in immediacy and sustainability of increases. Eventually, to calculate lasting financial impacts, MIT’s Sloan School came on board with complex computer algorithms to reveal the answer.

In its first year, Bell LD system-usage revenues increased by billions (even after all the decades since then, I don’t feel its my place to quote the actual amount, but it was huge).

We were proud of that – and prouder of the human contact we moved people to make.