PHONE NAMES
QANTAS RADIO
DECEMBER 2006
TALKING BUSINESS WITH PETER SWITZER
Jack Singleton is from Phone Names, a company that uses letters instead of numbers, as phone numbers. Widely used in the USA for thirty years, the concept is becoming more widely used around Australia
Peter Switzer My next guest on Talking Business is Jack Singleton from Phone Names. The concept of Phone Names has been widely promoted by national advertisers around the world for 30 years but has never been used by Australian advertisers until very recently. After overcoming a number of significant hurdles, this concept is taking off with companies such as Foxtel, the Commonwealth Bank and Optus already on board. Jack, welcome to Talking Business.
Jack Singleton Thank you. Thank you for having me.
PS Alright, mate, we should get the formalities out of the way. Yes, you are the son of John Singleton but you have achieved a few things more significant than just being John’s son, haven’t you?
JS One or two, yeah, although it’s a very good start.
PS Okay, it’s a good start.
JS It’s a great start.
PS Tell us about what you have done before we get to Phone Names.
JS I have worked for my dad for five years at his ad agency. I started off in the accounts department and my talents there were recognised and I moved into the stacking beer fridge department and car washing, but after five years I thought, well, I can keep working with my dad or I didn’t actually like that option so I went overseas and worked in a big agency in New York for two years, came back to Australia in ‘98 and started my own ad agency Jack Watts Currie. And yeah, just enjoyed not working with dad.
PS Okay, so are you still in that space?
JS Yeah, I’m still a director and shareholder in the advertising agency Jack Watts Currie, and doing a few other things as well.
PS Okay and you’ve innovated into this Phone Names business. Tell us the history that worked against Australia having phone names.
JS When I came back from New York in early ’98… One of the first things I noticed when I arrived in New York was this phone name phenomenon. You know, if you wanted Dominos you’d call 1800 DOMINOS, if you wanted a Thrifty Rent-a-Car you’d call 1800 THRIFTY. Came back to Australia, started my own ad agency and thought, why hasn’t this concept been used. I rang Telstra to try to find out and they said, We don’t know, we just can’t get the numbers you’re after.
I spoke to the Australian Communications Authority and they said, Well, we understand the concept but we don’t release numbers in bespoke ways, we release big blocks of numbers that may or may not spell anything. So it took six years of lobbying them to actually get them to release the numbers we needed. The keypad thing, that was a bit of a mess as well.
PS Explain that.
JS In 1993 there was an international standard keypad developed, which is what we’ve got on our mobile phones and home phones today. That didn’t become an Australian standard until 1996, so between ‘93 and ‘96 there were all these weird and wonderful alphanumeric keypads that were sold in Australia that they couldn’t sell in North America or Europe. You know, they had the ABC starting on the 1 key or the 2 key or they had the PQRS on the 7 key, the Q and the Z might have been on the 1 key or the zero key…
PS So, it’s impossible to put phone names when the keypads were not uniform.
JS The keypads were a mess and you couldn’t get the numbers needed anyway so when the Australian Standard came in in ’96, it meant that every new phone sold, by law had to have the letters on the correct number keys.
PS Okay. Now explain one thing to me, Jack. How come the Americans got phone names but at this stage we still have to educate probably people over — is there a certain age where they’re not as confident on phone names? The younger generation clearly are but what about the over 50s?
JS Before we went and spent millions of dollars buying numbers off the government, we did our own research. It wasn’t Roy Morgan or AC Nielson but we sent out a team of people and interviewed 300 or 400 people in the street. When people got really old they were actually more familiar with the concept because the original home phone numbers in Australia often involve letters, it might have been PETERSHAM 4218, so on the old rotary dial you would have dialled P-E-4-2-1-8.
PS Yeah, that’s right. I remember my grandmother’s was F-A.
JS Yeah, and look, we’re fortunate we’ve had 1800 REVERSE, which was set up by some friends of mine, and for five years they’ve been spending five to ten million dollars a year promoting 1800 REVERSE as the number to dial for reverse charge calls.
PS We’re talking to Jack Singleton from many areas but we’re talking about Phone Names, one of his businesses. Just in case there are some people listening right now, Jack, you want to do an education program. If your name is long, for example if it’s Shravinski and you’re 1300 SHRAVINSKI,
that would be a risk would it?
JS [laughter] That might be. I would think if you’ve got a nice easy-to-spell name…
PS Like Barry Bull, one of our guests on this program. That would be an easy one.
JS Easy to spell, yeah. Look I guess if you’ve got a company name that’s difficult to spell, yeah, you’re going to have problems with people misspelling your phone name just as you’d have trouble with people misspelling your domain name or just misspelling it in general.
PS But if there’s X number of numbers, how many numbers are relevant?
JS A phone name can be from six letters through to ten. Now, the phone system only actually recognises the first six numbers you dial after the 1300 or the 1800 and then it just ignores the extra digits on the end. 1300 Switzer — seven letters, you dial the R after you’ve dial the S-W-I-T-Z-E, it just ignores the R. So the underlying numbers are six.
PS Okay. Now for small business people on the plane who are wondering whether they should get into phone names, guess it’s also great if you can come up with a generic concept. Like, for example if you’re selling potato peelers, it might well be 1300 POTATO, that might be a great number.
JS That would be a cracker! Or, you know, the most expensive numbers are things like 1300 FLOWERS or PLUMBER or ELECTRICS or LOANS — they’re the big ones.
PS Yeah, and so what is the actual take up at this stage on phone names in that case?
JS There’s probably…we’re not the only player. There’s a company 1300 Australia that’s part-owned by Telstra. There are quite a few other players and I’d say between us there would be in excess of a thousand businesses out there currently using phone names to promote their business.
From the really big ones, as you said, I mean Foxtel, 1300 FOXTEL, Telstra, 1300 TELSTRA through to…we’re doing campaign for a guy who’s just leased 1300 WATERTANK. Now it’s a small business but he’s got big plans and I guess the number’s 1300 WATERTANK, it’s pretty hard to forget.
PS Yeah, and I guess once the community really feel comfortable with it… Has anyone actually done a fantastic education program, even on television, so people will feel comfortable about it?
JS I think that 1800 REVERSE, their first ads with Pat Rafter, they did a great job at educating that young audience and when we did our Roy Morgan research to see if people knew how to dial phone names, the people aged 14 to 24 was about 100 percent — everyone knew how to do it.
PS Yeah, and it must be fantastic for radio advertisers. When you’re driving a car and you hear of a great product, it’s really hard to write down a phone number but you can remember a name, can’t you?
JS I was laughing this morning driving in here, there was an ad for Clearview and they said the number three times. can’t tell you what the number is. There was an ad for Unwired Internet, they said their number three times. Then there was actually an ad for a company car loan,1300 CARLOAN and they said that number once and I’ll never forget that. When you want a car loan, you dial 1300 CARLOAN.
PS Yeah, it’s a very easy reference point for people who haven’t got a pen on them.
JS I mean radio, outdoor, anywhere where you haven’t actually got the number to write down.
PS Yeah, and I guess that’s the same benefi t of a website — w-w-w-dot and that name’s there and away you go.
JS You’ve never see a domain number advertised. I mean, all internet addresses really are numbers — people remember domain names.
PS It might be a good idea — www.11111. Anyway, final lessons about advertising. Let’s move you out of the phone names — we have people on the plane — what do you think are the most important lessons that people should learn about advertising if they’ve got a business?
JS I think one, you’ve got to work out why you’re advertising. Some people fall in love with the idea, Oh
we’re going to do some advertising — but unless you’ve got a measurable objective that you’re trying to hit then it’s all just a bit of fun and games.
If you know you want x hundred phone calls or you need to sell 428 widgets, write that down. Then you can work out the maths of how much money are we prepared to spend achieving each call or each order, or sale, or booking and be pretty scientific about it. Then you can have fun with the creative but you’ve got to be scientific first. No point just rushing into it thinking we need to do some advertising — you’ve got to think why am I actually advertising — and often, for a small business in particular, you go and chat with a radio station, now they’re going to tell you to advertise on the radio on their station; you go and chat to a newspaper, they’ll tell you to advertise in their newspaper.
Not everyone can afford an advertising agency but it’s good to get perhaps someone who’d worked in advertising that you know or a family friend who’s retired or get some advice from someone who really knows advertising, without necessarily having to go to the expense of appointing a large multinational agency.
PS Great, mate. Is there a website if people want to go to see what you’re up to?
PS That’s easy.
JS Or you call 1300 PHONENAMES.
PS Great stuff. Thanks for joining us on Talking Business.
JS Thank you. Thanks, Peter.