Consumers Just Can’t Get The Numbers Right

                                                                                         

A RECENT survey by Sydney agency ResponseBank has revealed a small gem that many marketers would do well to consider. People and phone numbers don't mix.

The telephone, be it mobile or fixed line, has been the communications revolution of the 20th century. From the moment Alexander Graham Bell summoned his offsider with the words “Mr Watson, come here, I want you,” the world was a changed place. People were accessible, in real time. Conversations crossed towns, countries and, finally, the globe.

But the success of the telephone has come at a terrible price -- the phone number. A random selection of digits marketers ask us on a daily basis to commit to memory.

From nearly the beginning, marketers knew that the phone was an important tool in touching base with consumers. Thus, many forms of advertising whether on TV, in newspapers or magazines, on billboards, or on the radio, offer a number the hapless consumer must find room in his or her already overwhelmed brain to fit in.

It seems such a simple thing to ask of us. Remember this number and give us a call.

Yet if the ResponseBank research is anything to go by, we simply can't do it. The quantitative survey of 1500 people found that unprompted recall of numbers for many blue-chip marketers was low.

Brands such as AAMI, Qantas and WeightWatchers achieved unprompted recall well below 20 per cent. And this is despite the huge growth in the use of shortened “13'' numbers that send consumers to a central call centre.

ResponseBank partner Paul McBeth summed up his views on phone numbers saying, “We knew what the results would be before we even sent the survey out. People can't remember numbers.''

Since the advent of the mobile phone, the pressure on Joe Public to remember any one of dozens of numbers has become phenomenal. There is your home number, work, husbands' and wives' mobiles, the parents, grandparents and the children. For those of us suffering numeric overload, every new marketing campaign with yet another number to remember is tantamount to assault. And thus, many companies investing thousands of dollars in the rental of these numbers may be missing out.

Yet look overseas, to the US in particular, and the answer to this conundrum seems all too simple. For decades Americans have happily used the power of the alpha-numeric key pad (it was originally a rotary dial) to dial in the name of the company they wanted to contact.

Want a Midas Muffler store, simply dial 1-800-MIDAS and you are there. Pizza? Dial DOMINOS or PIZZA HUT.

Yet Australian marketers are only now beginning to understand the power of vanity phone numbers, while consumers themselves might actually be ready for a branded phone number revolution.

The extraordinary rise of SMS text messaging could be the key that finally frees the hapless consumer from the tyranny of the marketer's phone number. With most mobile users now happily texting away with their alpha-numeric keypads, the moment would appear right for Australia's telcos to entice marketers to embrace word-based phone numbers.

In Melbourne recently a company called 1-300 Marketing started the ball rolling with an industry-centric telephone number 1300 REAL ESTATE, connecting home buyers with estate agents across the country. 1300's Alan Paterson says the vanity number industry remains in its infancy, but has been driven by the standardisation of the mobile phone alpha-numeric keypad. ``It's been clearly shown in the US people recall alpha numeric numbers much more easily than normal phone numbers,'' Paterson says. ``Already in Victoria we have 13-CABS, 1300-REFUGE and 1300-RECYCLE.''

For the numerically challenged among us, struggling to remember our own mobile numbers, pin codes and wedding anniversaries, the move to embrace vanity numbers may well be marketing's greatest gift to the innumerate.

About the author:
Phone Names is Australia's leading provider of phone number words, which help with consumer recall of an organisations number. The goal of their 1300 / 1800 services is to assist businesses increase advertising response rates.

The Australian
By Simon Canning

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