Welcome, You’ve Got Celebrities

With 9.4 million customers and growing, you wouldn’t think a juggernaut like America Online would need a celebrity-laden contest to boost its popularity. But starting today, the world’s top online service provider will begin a two-month promotion featuring the likes of Rosie O’Donnell, David Letterman and Dennis Rodman.

In all, 10 celebs will put their own twist on AOL’s signature greetings--”Welcome,” “You’ve got mail” and “Goodbye.” The current greetings, originally recorded in 1989 by a low-profile volunteer, are now heard 17 million times daily, according to the Dulles, Va., company, which last week posted record quarterly sales.

Each week, AOL will substitute the voice of a different celebrity and let members guess whose voice it is. (If they’re right, they could win prizes from BMW, J.C. Penney, Barnes & Noble and Starbucks, among others.) America Online promises that the mystery voices will range from “witty” to “cheeky,” such as late-night talk show host Letterman’s salutation: “Welcome, please hang on to your wigs and keys.”

AOL spokeswoman Janine Dunne said the contest was designed to make the service more fun and to promote various content areas. Despite AOL’s recent efforts to boost revenue from advertising and marketing deals, the contest is not “a new advertising strategy” to highlight companies that are contributing prizes, she said.

To promote the contest, which ends Jan. 18, America Online has compiled an array of statistics about the “You’ve got mail” greeting, which the company claims is heard about 11,000 times a minute and has “achieved cult status in both the online and offline worlds.”