Phone hotlines make a comeback—behind the nostalgia marketing tactic

Before the turn of the century, a lot of TV ads had one thing in common: a hotline. At the bottom of many commercials was a phone number. If you called it, the voice on the other end usually went into full sales-pitch mode, including prompting you to order stuff like the latest “Now That’s What I Call Music,” to quote one frequent campaign from back in the day. Today, some brands are recalling those good old days of direct-response TV advertising: A range of companies, from Oatly to State Farm, are adding hotlines to their ads. While some are feeding into nostalgia, others are looking for ways to engage their audience on a deeper level. As opposed to digital marketing—where first-party data collection is often a key goal—some brands deploying hotlines say they aren’t using them to collect personal information. Ad Age events Sign up for events and awards Learn more here Inside hotline campaigns We started 2022 living in the future, with QR codes starring in TV ads. But we ended it in the past, with hotlines making a comeback. Take Oatly, for instance. Rather than tacking a hotline onto an existing campaign, the plant-based beverage brand actually built its creative around the idea of a hotline. Dubbed the “Oatly Emotional Support Hotline for Plant-Based Eaters who are attending meat-and-dairy-based Thanksgiving dinners,” the hotline—which debuted Nov. 17—was a place for the plant-based set to get some support over the holidays. “There was an option for you to press a button and just scream into an empty void” after calling the hotline, said Armando Turco, executive creative director at Oatly North America. Another option included hearing a list of ways to weave the climate-related benefits of plant-based eating into Thanksgiving dinner conversation. “I’m under no illusion that this particular campaign was going to be driving direct sales,” Turco said with a laugh. It was more of a way to broadcast Oatly’s values (supporting both plant-based eaters and the fight against climate change) without sounding too high and mighty, he said. For other brands, adding a hotline is more of a ’90s nostalgia play to attract millennial audiences. Look no further than State Farm’s “Jazz Bath” campaign. Featuring a character named Jeff who plays the saxophone, the ad uses a hotline to promote the insurance company’s new music CD, which was available for free until supplies ran out. The effort was a nostalgia play, according to Clinton Inselmann, director of marketing at State Farm, and Dave Wasserman, senior VP of creative at The Marketing Arm, the agency behind the campaign that began in November. Millennials, some of whom grew up in the CD-playing generation, are now starting to need the types of insurance State Farm sells, Wasserman explained. So it made sense for the brand to use those ’80s and ’90s childhood memories to appeal to them. “They’re entering their insurance arc,” Wasserman said of the generation. “A lot of them have first homes and families, so there are a lot of reasons for them to engage with State Farm. We just want to … reinforce that we’re young and modern, just like they are, and [that] we understand what their needs are.” What’s in it for the brands? Collecting user-generated content or first-party data could be reasons to use hotlines, but some brands aren’t crossing that line with consumers just yet. On Oatly’s hotline, they could scream into the void at the end, “or use that space for whatever they want,” Turco said. The brand could have recorded that, he said, but “it would have been difficult for us to get the clearances to use any of that content after the fact.” And it might have acted as a deterrent—as it would have forced the brand to reach back out to those people and get their permission, Turco said. “We didn't want to hinder people from participating in any way,” he said. “People are a little bit suspicious when you tell them that you’re going to be using the recording.” Alcohol brand Twisted Tea, which also recently ran a campaign with a hotline, doesn’t currently have plans to do anything with the more than 100 voicemails received from more than 400 national callers, according to Erica Taylor, director of marketing. The campaign urged people to call the “Twistmas Holiday Hotline” to get advice on how to make the holidays more fun during the two weeks leading up to Dec. 25. While Taylor said there aren’t plans for those voicemails “yet,” she added that collecting them wasn’t why Twisted Tea ran the campaign. However, the brand “could think about how we use voicemails in the future,” Taylor said. Twisted Tea also confirmed that collecting first-party data (such as cell phone numbers) “was not the goal,” and that the brand doesn’t have “any plans to utilize any data.” State Farm collected first-party data from those who went to its website to order the CD, but said “the hotline was more of a talk-worthy extension of the campaign designed to drive awareness of the program in a way that’s authentic to how CDs were promoted.” Outlier Mint Mobile, partially owned by Ryan Reynolds, did use recordings of some of the voicemails from its latest hotline effort. A video campaign promoting a pair of pants with “extra large pockets,” where customers could put all the money they'd theoretically save using Mint Mobile, included a hotline anyone could call (and leave a voicemail) to order. Mint wanted to use some of the voicemails to create social content, so its marketing team had to figure out a way around the privacy issues that prevented other brands from doing the same. Mint's internal agency, Full Bars, produced the ad. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Mint Mobile (@mintmobile) The solution was simple, said Aron North, Mint Mobile's chief marketing officer: “On the inbox ... it says if you leave a message, we could use it in future marketing materials.” He added that Mint wasn't as smart with a previous hotline. For that one, North and his team spent hours calling each person who left messages and verbally sought permission to use the audio. The “extra large pockets" campaign was posted on social media platforms on Jan. 25. It has garnered more than 280 likes on Instagram and more than 4,000 Twitter views. North did not reveal Mint Mobile's spend on the campaign, adding that it didn’t collect first-party data with this effort, either. Subscribe to Ad Age Sign up now for the latest industry news and analysis Click here

Phone hotlines make a comeback—behind the nostalgia marketing tactic

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