Word: mci
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With such high competitive stakes, the Big Three long-distance firms spent inordinate sums to woo their customers. AT&T dished out an estimated $200 million on the election, or nearly half its annual advertising budget. MCI invested $75 million, and US Sprint $70 million...
...gone for television commercials in a kind of surrogate Battle of the Long-Distance Pitchmen. AT&T employed Actor Cliff Robertson, who had earned a reputation for scrupulous honesty by blowing the whistle on a 1977 Hollywood embezzlement scandal, for a reported salary of $2 million a year. MCI riposted with Burt Lancaster and Comic Joan Rivers. Sprint was represented for a time by Psychologist Joyce Brothers. The campaign has also extended beyond the airwaves to local shopping malls and amusement parks, where the rival long-distance suppliers have even hired acrobats and clowns to promote their cause...
...seems only fitting for a purely commercial election contest, the long- distance companies have also resorted to price cutting to win votes. US Sprint has offered a 10% reduction on all long-distance calls for a year to anyone who signs up for the service before Sept. 30. MCI is offering its users a ! free, one-hour long-distance call to anywhere in the world...
...virtually every telephone customer in the U.S., amassed during decades of monopoly service. Possession of those records allowed AT&T to adjust its campaign pitch more finely, and at lower cost, than could its rivals, who were allowed under FCC rules to buy customer data from the Baby Bells. MCI estimates that it spent between $10 and $15 to reach each residential customer in the election, more than three times the cost for AT&T. Says Charles Skibo, president of US Sprint: "AT&T had the data to sharpshoot and pick off select targets. We were shooting in the dark...
...also benefited from its rivals' failings. Many consumer feathers were ruffled, for example, by the revelation that US Sprint and MCI, among other retailers, have long overcharged hundreds of customers by billing them for long-distance calls that were not completed. The reason: in past years, AT&T alone has had the kind of sophisticated equipment that can set the long- distance meter running only when a successful telephone connection is made. The other companies simply began charging for an average of six seconds of service after three telephone rings, regardless of whether anyone answered. According to some experts, consumers...