Stars Pushing Products After the Beep

Dick Clark, ever ubiquitous on TV and radio, has found a new medium: telephone answering machines.

“Hi, this is Dick Clark,” the ageless host told thousands earlier this week. “I’m sorry to reach you at home, but I just wanted to call your attention to a television special I produced.”

Clark is the latest celebrity to join an emerging chorus of famous telemarketers. Before, telemarketers were anonymous, low-paid strangers. But in recent months, real-life celebrities--or at least taped versions of them--have been carpet-bombing the nation’s answering machines. Bill Clinton urged targeted voters to support Democratic candidates in November’s elections. Singer Michael Bolton urged fans to purchase a new album. As the NBA lockout dragged on, Orlando Magic owner Richard DeVos urged season ticket holders to “be patient.”

While such taped celebrity pitches have Federal Communications Commission enforcement officials on alert, a firm that specializes in them reports they are wildly popular--especially compared with traditional telemarketing. “Recipients love these things,” said Rob Tuttle, chief executive of the Broadcast Team, a small Ormond Beach, Fla., firm that specializes in these campaigns. Tuttle’s firm made the familiar voice of Dick Clark a little more so earlier this week when the Washington area was a target market for this telephonic assault.

Clark was promoting Monday night’s American Music Awards. He told prospective viewers the time and channel for the show. He spoke in the relaxed, familiar manner of an old friend.

But some local targets were not amused. “People found the phone calls quite annoying,” said Chris Pike, the general manager of WJLA Channel 7 in Washington, who said the station received a flurry of calls from angry viewers.

Pike said Channel 7 had nothing to do with the calls and said they were commissioned by Dick Clark Productions, the Burbank studio that produced Monday night’s show. Studio representative Logan Carr confirmed it was Clark’s voice on the messages and that calls were placed to selected markets in the U.S.

Dick Clark Productions received about a dozen calls and electronic mail messages from pitch recipients Monday, Carr said. The calls came less in anger than confusion. “One guy was worried that his mother had gone over the bend because she was insisting Dick Clark called her.”

Clark was unavailable for comment Tuesday, Carr said, because “he’s busy doing cartoon voice-overs.”

Tuttle said the phone calls are geared to answering machines rather than live people; most are placed during the day, when targets are presumed to be at work. If someone answers, the client that is using this system (in this case, Dick Clark Productions) can automatically request the call disconnect immediately.

“We’re trying to hit answering machines,” said Tuttle, who said his company has the capacity to complete more than 1 million calls a day. He won’t divulge how many calls his company made in the Dick Clark campaign, or to what markets they were placed--although Carr said Dick Clark Productions only received reaction calls from metropolitan Detroit and Washington.

Clients pay the Broadcast Team 25 to 75 cents per call, Tuttle said, depending on the length of the message. It’s cheaper, he said, than if a company sends the same amount of information via direct mail. He said campaigns geared to answering machines generate far fewer complaints than calls that reach people in person.

Celebrities are coached during taping sessions on how to sound folksy and familiar. Since most of them are used to public speaking, Tuttle said, it generally comes easy.

“The voice sounds incredibly real and unscripted,” said Steve Swetoha, director of ticket sales for the Orlando Magic, speaking of DeVos’ message to 5,500 season ticket holders during the NBA lockout.

“Rich DeVos here,” the Magic owner says matter-of-factly. “I’m sorry that we’re using a tape recording for this, but we’re trying to call all of our season ticket holders.”

Swetoha said he knows of no complaints from season ticket holders, although a few called to say: “Rich DeVos just called me; what’s going on?” The team is contemplating similar promotions involving Magic players, he said.

Entertainment businesses are turning increasingly to direct marketing techniques to reach potential clients, said Chet Dalzell, a representative for the Direct Marketing Assn. in New York. The trend raises dicey legal questions, especially since the 1991 passage of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, which placed restrictions on direct marketing activity.

While the act limits the ability to complete a sale through unsolicited phone calls, there are broadly interpreted exceptions--and the Broadcast Team has a crew of attorneys steeped in the law and its loopholes, Tuttle said. For instance, while the law says a business cannot complete a sale to an unwilling customer over the phone, Tuttle points out Dick Clark was not “completing a sale” but telling someone to watch something at a certain time, “like a friend.”

This is debatable, said Dorothy Attwood, the chief of enforcement at the common carrier bureau of the Federal Communications Commission. “Our view is that there is an argument to be made that these are unsolicited calls that run afoul of the TCPA,” Attwood said. She said the commission will be monitoring such direct marketing activity closely.