Telmex Uses Stereotypical Ads to Hang Onto Phone Business

Desperate to hang onto business after it loses its monopoly next year, Mexican phone giant Telmex is lashing out at Mexicans’ traditional antagonist: Americans.

Telmex has launched a TV ad campaign featuring a sinister-looking man speaking bad Spanish with a strong American accent, who tells viewers he is coming to Mexico to make money off them.

In a particularly unsubtle stroke, the character is named “Burton Helms”--a play on the highly unpopular U.S. Helms-Burton Act targeting foreign companies that deal in confiscated Cuban assets.

After telling viewers that his lucrative new phone business is long-distance “because it’s run from Chicago,” the “Burton Helms” character disappears from the screen in a cackle of laughter.

A suave Mexican follows him, assuring viewers in impeccable Spanish that only Telmex’s LADA (long-distance) phone brand links all of Mexico together.

The ad is targeted at various private phone consortia that have tapped U.S. partners for an assault on Telmex’s monopoly, which under Mexican law will be ended next year.

The new firms include Alestra, 49% owned by AT&T;, and Avantel, which groups MCI Communications and Mexican bank Banamex.

What the ad doesn’t tell viewers is that Telmex, privatized in 1990, now is partly owned by U.S. Baby Bell SBC Communications and France’s Telecom.