Qantas Radio
September 2008
Talking Business with Peter Switzer
Jack Singleton is the MD of Phone Names, an innovative marketing agency that lobbied the Australian government for six years to release the numbers that made Phone Names possible.
Jack joins us to talk about the growing demand for this distinctive marketing tool.
www.phonenames.com.au or 1300 PHONENAMES.
Peter Switzer My first guest on the program is Jack Singleton from Phone Names Marketing. Jack successfully lobbied to the Australian Government to release the names that have made Phone Names possible. Jack, thanks for joining us on Talking Business.
Jack Singleton Thank you Peter. Pleasure to be here.
PS I think a lot of people know the name. They’ve heard of your dad so let’s just concentrate on you and your company. What was the first company you kicked off which you still have?
JS My first company was Jack Watts Currie, an advertising agency which actually opened its doors a tad over 10 years ago. Prior to that I’d worked in New York in a large agency over there, and prior to that I worked with the old man. He sat me down and we had that serious conversation you have which is, ‘Do you want to work with me for the rest of your life or do your own thing?’. I thought about it for 10 seconds and I said, ‘I think I might do my own thing’.
PS Well, he’s pretty easy going to get along with, your old man, isn’t he?
JS Oh yeah. He’s always level, logical and rational and I have since got involved with my old man with a number of projects. Blue Tongue Brewery…
PS And also Paris Hilton as well! Tell us about that one because it got a lot of publicity didn’t it?
JS We did get a lot of publicity and fortunately also sold a lot of beer. Paris had expressed interest in coming to Australia for New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day about 18 months ago and she asked if there was anything she could do while in town (to help pay the bills for the handbags) and we just happened to be launching Bondi Blonde around about that time. Paris being blonde and wanting to be at Bondi Icebergs on New Year’s Day, it just seemed like a perfect fit.
PS Yeah, it was a perfect fit and I guess the interesting thing is that you can’t help getting advertising, right? It’s in the bloody media! But when those kinds of natural audience appeal magnets like Paris Hilton, it’s a rich field for a person like you, isn’t it?
JS Oh, it was the media coverage. I think we were very fortunate that there were no tsunamis and no one had died.
PS It’s great for the world of Jack. [Laughter]
JS It’s very good for the world [of Jack] and for beer sales, but it was a great fit and Paris was lovely as well as incredibly professional.
PS Most people say Paris is lovely, that’s the one in FranceI’m talking about. Now let’s just talk about the Phone Names thing because this was a tough gig for you, wasn’t it, because this country had an unusual supply of telephone pads?
JS That’s correct. Australia had been, I guess, a dumping ground for non compliant alphanumeric keypads. The Australian Standard was adopted (well, the International Standard that became the Australian Standard) in ‘96 but between ‘93 and ‘96 if you walked into a Telstra shop you could have picked up a phone with one of six ndifferent keypads, which really made the Phone Names alphanumeric dialling concept very difficult.
PS And was this one of the reasons the government was resistant to introducing Phone Names?
JS I think the government realised that was an issue. The Australian Communications Authority (now ACMA Communications) and Media Authority researched on keypads in the early ‘90s, mid ‘90s and towards the end of the decade, where they realised that it was becoming less of a problem, and that along with lobbying for companies such as ours, I guess, added up to them realising there was a commercial demand for Phone Names – phone numbers that spell business names.
PS Okay. We’re talking to Jack Singleton and we are talking about Phone Name marketing. How has it taken off, Jack, because at first it was a bit slow, wasn’t it?
JS Yeah, I guess having worked with online companies such as Yahoo! in the late ‘90s, everyone thought real online advertising would be a big thing and it took quite a few years for online to be an absolute must-have in the marketer’s toolbox. The same with the Phone Name thing. Increasingly there’d be a body of evidence we now have, whether it be research, case studies or test markets, is why you’ve got publicly listed companies such as Harvey Norman, Dominos and Telstra. Companies that we’ve worked with and are really reaping the rewards.
PS Is there a problem, mate, that if you have a difficult to spell name, that can go against the efficiency of using phone names?
JS Definitely, but no more so than a difficult to spell name could make it hard for someone to get your internet address right or even do a successful Google search. I mean, if your name was as difficult as…
PS Switzer or Singleton?
JS I think Switzer or Singleton most people could get their head around and it’s something that we come up against a bit, but people say, ‘Well if you can spell Dominos or you can spell Harvey Norman or Domain, then you can dial it’.
PS What’s the interest in Phone Names for small businesses like? Big business you can understand, their brand names are out there, but a small business is getting it as being an advantage for their customers or are they a bit slow on the uptake?
JS Small businesses we found are actually quicker to act. I guess because small businesses are run and owned by the same person. You know, you ask a lot of small businesses where they get their customers from and word of mouth comes up a lot. If you’ve got a Phone Name, that word of mouth recommendation is a lot more powerful. I said ‘Call Switzer Financial Services, look them up in White Pages or their number is 4298 3611’, compared to saying ‘Hey, give Switzer a call, 1300 SWITZER’. So for companies that don’t spend a lot of money on advertising and marketing, a Phone Name can work for them very, very well. And also little things like truck signage. If you’ve got a flower delivery van and the number is 1300 FLOWERS. If you’re a plumber and your fridge magnet is 1300 PLUMBER. You know, there’s a store opposite where I work that’s a hair loss company and their number is 1300 HAIRLOSS!
PS Are they targeting people like you and me, mate? [Laughter]
JS I think they might be, yeah. [Laughter]
PS But that’s an important point, Jack. Is there like a real estate rush for those great names as well?
JS Look there has been and recently we’ve had to tell a lot of potential clients we’re sorry that number you’re after, that Phone Name is gone. And when they’re gone, they’re gone. If you want 1300 FLOWERS, too late. If you want 1300 PLUMBER or if you want 1300 FITNESS, WATERTANK or BOOTCAMP, they’re gone. And when they’re gone, they’re gone.
PS And the interesting thing is that if your name is long it doesn’t really matter because there’s only a relevant amount of numbers?
JS Correct. Yeah, I mean, it’s the first. You dial the 1300 and then the name after that can be between six and ten letters long which is perfect if you’re a Switzer, a Dominos, or a Westpac.
PS Okay, people out there listening would be saying to themselves, ‘Okay, this guy has beaten on the doors of government, they’ve eventually given in, he’s got a great opportunity here and a business has developed’. How hard was it to beat on the door of government to get them to listen to you?
JS Very hard. I mean, if you tried to get a DA through local council, multiply that by about 100. It was not easy and it took six years between ‘98 and ’04, so it was six years of lobbying, pestering, many trips to Canberra and Melbourne meeting with the appropriate people...
PS And was it a big investment in terms of experts and consultants to prove your case?
JS Yes, it was. The time you’ve got to put into the submission as to why... I mean, government legislation
effectively did need to change to enable Phone Names, so it was not a cheap, nor was it a fast, process. It took a lot of time and a lot of money.
PS Jack, apart from the fact that you would probably say to me ‘The answer is Phone Names’ and I don’t want you to give me that answer because we’ve said enough about Phone Names.
JS The answer is Switzer, 1300 SWITZER.
PS [Laughter] Okay, but for people listening now, you do have a great understanding of advertising. What are the mistakes that people make in advertising their business?
JS The biggest mistake is to not work out what the objective is up front. Some people think ‘Hey, we’ll do some advertising’ and they might do a print run or they might do a letterbox drop or TV or radio, but there’s no point doing anything until you work out what you’re actually trying to achieve. What’s the issue? What’s the end result that we’re going to be happy with? And then you need to measure and monitor whether the advertising you’re doing is getting you closer to that end goal. Often you’ll see ads and I’ll look at it scratching my head, thinking, ‘What is that client really trying to do?’. If you don’t know what you’re trying to achieve, if you haven’t got an objective, you’re not going to get it.
PS And also do you think a lot of people go outside their own customer base when they could actually be advertising better to their own customer base more economically?
JS Yeah, look, I know with my business, and you’d know with yours, getting more business from existing customers is always the most effective way of growing your business. You’ve got to get that customer base to a certain size by selling them more products or services more often. That is the best way to grow a business.
PS And how important is research in a customer base?
JS Oh, everything. If you’re telling them exactly the right thing, at exactly the right time, the right way and the right place, you’ll get a sale. If you haven’t researched that database then you don’t really know enough about them and it can be the difference between a one percent response rate and a 10/15. We did a direct mail campaign recently and we got a 30 percent response rate, which is, if you talk to direct mail people, unheard of.
PS About one percent, isn’t it?
JS Yeah, the time and effort we put into knowing everything we could about the people on that list meant that we got that response.
PS One last question and we are running out of time. Imagine you knew someone who owned a financial services business and he wanted to create the best website in the entire world so people would turn up. What would you pay for the customer research to find out information about your customers?
JS Look, I would think that if your total marketing budget is X, then I would think 10 to 15 percent of that on research is money well spent, because if it can increase your response rate to a marketing campaign from one or two percent to 10 or 15 percent, you know, it’s better than having to spend three times, four times, 10 times more on advertising. Find out everything you can about your potential customer and then hit them at the right time.
PS Jack, excellent. If people want to look up what you’re doing, what’s the website?
JS The phone name is 1300 PHONENAMES, and online, www.phonenames.com.au
PS Jack, thanks for joining us on Talking Business.
JS Thank you, Peter. Pleasure.