From: FZC@CU.NIH.GOV (Paul Robinson)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Two Articles on MCI
Date: 6 Nov 92 01:03:18 GMT
Reply-To: TDARCOS@MCIMAIL.COM
Organization: TELECOM Digest
X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu
X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu
X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 12, Issue 823, Message 2 of 6

Two articles on MCI from the November 5, 1992, {Washington Post}

 
[Article 1, Digest, Page B13]

MCI and 46 global telecommunications firms signed a construction and
maintenance agreement for TPC-5, a 15,525 mile, $1.3 billion
fiber-optic network intended to link Japan, Guam and the United States
by late 1995.


[Article 2, Page B12]

[Photo: a face, lower left profile; next to it a black diamond in
        white the words "The MCI 100 Day Report"]
[Photo Caption: A scene from an MCI television commercial above, and
                the logo from its newspaper ad campaign]

MCI's Ads to Drive You Mad
New Campaign another of the 'What Is It?' Variety

By Paul Farhi and Cindy Skrzycki, Washington Post Staff Writers

   Sinister sounding music swells on the sound track.  Grainy, shadowy
black-and-white images flicker on the screen.  "This can't go on,"
intones an anxious male voice.  Then up comes the Kennedy-style
slogan, "If not us, who?  If not now, when?"

   All of which may have left viewers who saw this jagged imagery on
TV Tuesday night with a question of their own: Huh?

   Shot in a style that even Fellini might have deemed obtuse, the
bizarre 30-second drama is part of a new $10 million ad campaign from
MCI Communications Corp., the Washington-based long-distance phone
company.

   The commercials are MCI's way of telling small and medium-sized
businesses that they will soon be able to switch their 800 number from
their existing provider to MCI.

   If that message didn't quite come across loud and clear in the
commercials that began airing Tuesday, MCI and its ad agency say
that's intentional.

   Just as Infiniti tantalized car buyers with commercials featuring
trees and rocks but no cars, MCI ads are "teasers" -- in effect,
commercials for a forthcoming series of commercials.

   In MCI's case, none of this weeks commercials actually describes
the benefits of switching to its 800 service.  Instead, the ads
attempt to play off the themes of the presidential campaign, with
vague references to MCI's "agenda for change" and its plan "for the
first 100 days."

   In one especially strange spot that aired during the election
returns on the networks, two business executives are seen guffawing,
snorting and generally carrying on about ... well, it's not entirely
clear what's so funny.

   "This is a campaign that will evolve," promised Ron Berger, the
creative director at MCI's ad agency, Messner Vetere Berger McNamee
Schmetter of New York, which conceived of and shot the ads in one
month.  "We're trying to get people to sit up on Election Night and
look at things and be provoked by them."

   Berger, whose agency also produces ads for Volvo and Coppertone,
said MCI's commercials have to be provocative and challenging to
compete with giant rival AT&T.

   In the fierce and seemingly never-ending ad wars among
long-distance companies, AT&T spends about $2.5 billion on its
marketing -- roughly twice MCI's outlay.

   Unless you need an 800 number, the ads don't necessarily have to
make sense.  The campaign, after all, takes a mass-market approach to
reaching a narrow group of consumers: business customers -- or at least
those people who are the "influencers" within a company about
telecommunications decisions, said Timothy Price, president of MCI's
newly formed business services division.

   The company estimates that small and medium-sized businesses spend
some $18 billion a year for all kinds of telecommunications services.

   But are extreme close-ups of somber-faced business executives any
way to capture a market?  To MCI's credit, few people seemed to have
missed its new ads; on the other hand, not everyone loved them.

   That the ads generated word of mouth around the office water cooler
is proof that MCI "broke through" on some level, said Jay Chiat,
chairman of ad agency Chiat/Day/Mojo Inc.

   Chiat, whose agency created the equally dark "Lemmings" spot for
Apple Computer Inc. in 1986, said the first reaction among a group he
was watching TV with was: " 'What's going on?'  People forget that
advertising is a redundant thing.  If you are intrigued, you will keep
looking at it, trying to figure out what the message is.

   "You don't have to like advertising but you do have to be provoked
by it."

   But Bob Garfield, who reviews ads for Advertising Age magazine,
found MCI's spots "so grossly melodramatic for the situation at hand
as to be laughable ... You'd think the guys in the spot were
discussing the pros and cons of ethnic cleansing, not how cheaply you
can dial Memphis."