Japanese Have a Yen to Call : Nippon Tel’s Special Promotions Have Consumers Hooked
Tong Tong was a star the minute he was born, and Nippon Telegraph & Telephone, with all the foresight of a Hollywood agent, knew it.
Tong Tong, Japan’s first panda baby, was born June 1, 1986, and like the new cub born last week at Washington’s National Zoo, he had plenty to say and plenty of people eager to listen. So NTT turned Tong Tong into a recording star.
Within five days, more than a million people called special lines that NTT had set up, to listen to a recording of Tong Tong’s first words--actually, squeaky-whiny sorts of noises. The heavy volume of calls overburdened NTT’s switching system, so much so that the company increased the number of lines playing the recording from 39 to 168.
NTT couldn’t have been happier. Once more, it had tapped into the Japanese psyche and pulled out a hit. The dial-a-panda service is one of the most successful of the phone company’s array of informational and entertainment recordings, which are an integral part of its wide-ranging campaign to encourage the Japanese to use their telephones more often.
For the past year, NTT has been heavily promoting these special programs in preparation for its first wave of true competition. The company, which had revenue of $28.3 billion in the year ended March 31, 1986, used to be a government-owned monopoly. Now it is gradually being privatized, and the telecommunications industry is being opened to competition. By fall, competitors will be offering long-distance service primarily to corporate customers, and though NTT is tailoring some services to business, it is giving equal attention to its residential customers.
“NTT is in the same position AT&T; was in 1979,” said Robert Crandall of the Brookings Institution in Washington. “They will be assaulted in long-distance service, and they have been subsidizing local rates with long-distance (revenue). . . . Now that they have admitted entry (of competitors) in long distance, that will lower (long-distance) rates. They’ll have to raise local rates.”
The Japanese use their private telephones less often than Americans, said Yasutaka Akabane, deputy general manager of NTT’s California office in Los Altos. On average, he said, a household telephone bill might run $20 to $25 a month, including long-distance calls.
Some of NTT’s programs to increase phone usage are similar to those by its American counterpart, American Telephone & Telegraph, which urge customers to “reach out and touch someone.” One of NTT’s slogans suggests that workers “phone home” at the end of each work day to let their families know they’re on their way.
Also, there’s a special day each month designated as “talk day,” a phone-in bulletin-board type service and telephone calling cards, the handy-dandy prepaid chits that enable pay-phone users to make calls without coins.
Talk day is on the 19th of each month. Posters promoting talk day show family members checking up on one another or friends calling friends just to talk.
Such suggestions might seem too simplistic and straightforward for Madison Avenue’s high-powered advertising houses. But they seem to work in Japan, where people like to feel part of a group, cultural experts say, and fads reflect that need.
Talk day, while qualifying as somewhat of a fad, also capitalizes on the Japanese affection for foreign words. In Japanese, the word for “19” sounds something like “talk” in English; it can even be pronounced as “talk-you.” That may be stretching it, but NTT officials say the idea has caught on, and--though they won’t reveal numbers--that calls have increased measurably on that day.
The calls to Tong Tong though, stem from pure affection. “Japanese people are crazy about pandas, so when Tong Tong was born, they wanted to hear his voice,” Akabane said.
Tong Tong, in fact, was even more popular than the Princess of Wales--and that’s going some. “We had a Lady Di boom here,” said Yoshio Katsumata, manager of NTT’s press relations in Tokyo.
After Princess Diana’s visit in May, 1986, NTT offered callers a chance to listen in on the various greetings and speeches she made on the tour. And 200,000 of her fans rang up the first day.
Tong Tong got more calls because “even non-English speaking Japanese could understand the baby panda,” Katsumata said.
Unusual Services
Such recordings are similar to the “976” services that have sprung up in the United States since its telecommunications industry was deregulated. But unlike the astrology, dating and phone-Santa types of 976 recordings in the United States, NTT’s recorded lines do not carry extra toll charges. For the basic cost of the phone call, listeners can hear the latest baseball, Sumo wrestling and horse racing results--passions among the Japanese.
Some services allow callers to sing along with recorded music or listen to vignettes told by television and recording stars. Among the more unusual services are recordings associated with certain localities, such as tours of landmarks and “comments” by famous historical personalities.
Some of them are recordings of bird songs--a service, NTT’s Akabane said, that probably wouldn’t fly in the United States, where he has lived for three years.
“In the U.S., you are surrounded by nature--it’s very close to you, so you don’t have to listen to a tape recording of chirping of birds. . . . I can sit here in my office and hear birds,” he said.
But the Japanese, who for the most part live in dense cities far from pastoral settings, “are isolated from natural things. . . . They have to get out of Tokyo and take a train for a couple of hours if they want to be in touch with nature.”
So far, the most successful recording service is one that is barely 3 months old: an information line on acquired immune deficiency syndrome that NTT established in cooperation with Japan’s Ministry of Welfare.
Even though there have been fewer than 50 cases of AIDS reported so far in Japan, the tragic disease has incited a deep fear and curiosity among the 120 million Japanese. In the first two months the service was available, more than 500,000 people called the line every day.
NTT says it has developed such new services “in response to customer requests and suggestions.” In its attempts to cater to its customers’ every comfort, NTT also is testing a new pay phone booth--with air conditioning. The experimental booth in Takamatsu City has proved almost too popular: Wilted city workers find it a respite from the stifling humidity and jostle for a chance to do some cool talking.
“I think we will have to lower some rates,” Akabane said. “People will feel more comfortable in the (air-conditioned) booths, and we expect they’ll be making longer phone calls.”
