976 Numbers

Thank God
for the devil.

Anyway,
there she was, all spread out in her nude, nubile glory, beckoning me
to feast my eyes on every square inch of her lush, wanton, young
body. But that's not all she was beckoning me to do. No, Sir! She was
also beckoning me to call her at a special number so I could hear her
passionately profess how much she wanted my body.

And so I
did.

And
so did a few other people. In fact, if my info is correct, some of
those centerfold ladies receive...

500,000
Calls Per Day!

Whooee!
That's a lot of heavy breathing, ain't it? But, so what? What
ramifications, if any, does this have to do with our marketing
efforts?

Plenty.
Just wait. Now listen, do you know how this business of 976 numbers
works? It's sort of like this: What you do is you go to Ma Bell and
tell her you want to have some 976 numbers. Then you arrange to buy
or lease some phone answering equipment. All this will cost you a few
thou. O.K., after you've got all this in place, what you do is you
run ads or mail letters or somehow entice people to call your 976
number to hear a recorded message.

The
numbers go something like this: First, the customer (he who does the
dialing) must pay his normal phone charges. What this means is that
if your 976 number is located in the 212 area code and he is calling
from area code 213, then he must pay a long distance toll charge.
However, if he is calling from the same area code, there is, of
course, no long distance charge.

Furthermore,
he must also pay a fee (usually about $2.00) for the privilege of
listening to the info on the 976 recorded message.

And
what happens to this $2.00 fee? Aha, I thought you'd never ask. Hear
this: The fee is collected by Ma Bell (it is added to the caller's
phone bill) and Ma keeps about $.50 of it and sends the rest (about
$1.50) to you!