[Telecom-Network Services Firm Qwest's Ads Raise Question Of Taste]
NEW YORK -(Dow Jones)- Qwest Communications International Inc., a start-up company that is building a high-capacity fiber-optic network, is launching a nasty advertising campaign agaisnt its long-Distance rivals, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.
The ad shows a young man named Bob perched on the top of a tall building, with a policeman trying to persuade him not to jump. The policeman keeps on coaxing until Bob reveals that he works for a "big long-distance phone company." "Then jump!" shouts the policeman. "You heard him!" screams a little girl nearby. The policeman rushes up to an onlooker and hollers: "Get up there and push that guy off the building!"
Qwest aims to strike a chord with consumers who are increasingly confused and annoyed by hard-to-compare rate plans. MCI Communications Corp. offers five-cent-a-minute Sundays and 10-cent-a-minute Saturdays, but the rate jumps to 25 cents a minute on weekdays between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. Little LCI International boasts that it charges to the exact second, while competitors round up charges to the next full minute. Market leader AT&T Corp. ballyhoos an all-day 15-cent-a-minute rate, while attacking the alleged shortcomings of MCI's 10-321 service.
But there are risks in Qwest's campaign, which carries its own promise of lower rates. Companies say many consumers are tired of hearing phone companies bash each other. AT&T and MCI lately have been toning down their vicious attacks, focusing more on warm-and-fuzzy ads of family members phoning each other. Moreover, the notion of encouraging a potential jumper to commit suicide raises an obvious question of taste, and it could upset some broadcasters.
Qwest's ads "will probably get noticed, so they'll achieve one objective," said John Lister, chairman of Lister Butler Consulting, a New York brand-identity firm. But the "nasty-funny" approach may backfire, he says: "If they were looking toward a longer-term strategy, they would not want to make nasty imagery part of their brand."
Qwest and its ad agency, for their part, argue that the ads are humorous enough not to turn people off or bother broadcasters. They say they decided to torture Bob in the ads after discovering just how fed up consumers were with long-distance companies. In a focus group, one meek elderly woman turned "really red and angry," said Tom Moudry, chief creative officer of Omnicom Group's Focus Agency in Dallas, which created the ads. "Policemen and children are normally out to foster people's goodwill," he says. "To see them turn on poor Bob really adds to the humor."
Qwest vows to beat the rates offered by AT&T, MCI and Sprint "forever." The company, which offers customers a rate of 10 cents a minute plus a monthly $4.50 charge, even promises to monitor customers' phone bills every three months and to match any difference if any of the big three companies' bills would have come out lower. Qwest says it can offer lower prices because it is building from scratch a modern network that is more cost-efficient than the aging networks of switches used by the giant rivals.
Armed with a hefty ad budget of about $50 million for the year, the company plans to roll out the service - and the ads - gradually, starting with nine cities in the next six weeks, including San Francisco, Denver, Indianapolis and Los Angeles. Qwest is buying ad time on a local basis, which allows it to bypass the TV network approval process. Qwest emphasizes, however, that it is buying locally because the ads will be rolled out gradually and not because it is concerned about a possible controversy. It is targeting a total of 27 million consumers in the nine cities.
Another ad by Focus shows a priest comforting an injured Bob, strapped with an oxygen mask in a hospital. When the priest finds out Bob's occupation, he angrily closes the curtains, climbs onto Bob's bed, and. . . . the clatter of utensils falling on the floor fades away in the background.
Moudry concedes that some in the agency initially feared the ad might be too controversial. But their fears were calmed after reviewing a series of humorous ads in the past that use religious characters. For example, he says, one ad for the California Milk Processors Board by Omnicom's Goodby, Silverstein & Partners shows a priest excitedly chomping down a brownie, then kicking a vending machine after failing to retrieve a carton of milk from it.
Qwest also will run some different TV ads that focus more on its "renegade" roots - the company is headed by a former AT&T executive, Joseph Nacchio. And the company's foreign-language ads for Hispanic and Asian consumers, who the company is also aggressively targeting, steer clear of nastiness. Ad agencies say many of these consumers see big companies as steady and reliable. So the ads created by multi-ethnic agency Muse Cordero Chen & Partners feature softly lit scenes of smiling parents holding their newborn baby, and then using Qwest to call their family to share the good news. |
