ndallen@contact.uucp (Nigel Allen) (07/18/90)
(from Playback Strategy, July 16, 1990) Alberta Government Telephones is using a family of twelve to promote call waiting - one of the special features in its custom services package. Dennis and Charleen Oberg with their ten children - age two through seventeen - appear in double-page magazine ads under the headline "Two Parents, Ten Kids and Call Waiting". Nick Drinkwater, account manager at Baker Lovick Advertising in Calgary, the agency responsible for the ad, says the concept of using a large family to promote the benefits of call waiting was ideal. However, taking the ad from initial inspiration to final form was no easy task. In fact, a province-wide search was needed to turn up a family that fulfilled the concept's two main conditions: there had to be eight or more children in the family and the household had to have call waiting. The ad, which will run until October in a variety of Alberta magazines, is part of AGT's 1990 integrated advertising campaign, themed "AGT - We bring the world to you." The Baker Lovick campaign also includes various other print ads and radio and TV spots. [Note from NDA: It's interesting that AGT and its ad agency were sufficiently honest to find a family that already had call waiting, rather than hiring a bunch of models for the ad. Regular readers of comp.dcom.telecom will know that AGT is the main telephone company in the province of Alberta, Canada. It is owned by the Alberta government, which would like to sell the company.]