Only in California: Sprint PCS's 'Hey' dudes took L.A. by storm

This is the story of an advertising campaign that was so successful, it turned a regional service launch into hoopla only Los Angeles could handle. The moral? Know your audience.

What started as a few radio spots featuring two Generation X slackers-meant to introduce Southern Californians to Sprint PCS service last November-turned into a 10-month series of 90 spots. Radio talk shows and competitors' commercials spoofed the ads. Students wrote term papers about how the characters relate to society. Sprint received daily fan mail. Radio listeners called each other and imitated the characters, who themselves had become local celebrities. And most important, they ordered Sprint PCS service.

"We were remarkably successful in marketing brand awareness," said a Sprint spokeswoman, who still receives voice mail messages from people imitating the characters.

It's not hard to do. The 60-second spots all start with the slow, jazzy bass and drum of Beat poetry readings. A phone rings. Dude One says, "Hey." After a long pause, Dude Two says, "Hey." Then plots run from an over-the-phone game of rock-paper-scissors, to conversations with girlfriends, to a spot where One gets extremely annoyed by Two's insistence on speaking in Spanish.

"The premise behind it was that with Sprint PCS, you felt like you could talk forever on your phone," the spokeswoman said.

Of course all good things must come to an end, and a la "M*A*S*H" and "Seinfeld," Sprint PCS had a grand finale while the campaign was at the height of its popularity, the spokeswoman said.

First, in August, there was a sendoff party at the Virgin Megastore on Sunset Boulevard. Two hundred fans showed up to see the "dudes," who had been set up in a slacker-apartment styled store window.

Mark Sweeney, who wrote the spots for ad agency Hal Riney & Partners, also donated his voice to be Dude One. He was amazed at how the attention at the sendoff party quickly turned him into a ham. "Never in a million years did I expect that kind of response," he said.

Then, following the party, the dudes met their demise on-air. One choked on a burrito and went to heaven. After seeing that the afterlife consisted of a never-ending burrito and a couch, he suggested that his friend might enjoy it there. Two was promptly hit by a cement truck.

"That's just how they had to die," said Sweeney, who until then had been getting his ideas from conversations with friends.

He believes that the campaign could work nationally, but Sprint believes the ads were successful because they perfectly suited the California market, the spokeswoman said.

"The market there always tests differently," said Debra McMahon, vice president of Mercer Management Consulting. "It's a climate where edgier commercials tend to do better."

Sprint had originally been targeting a younger, Gen X-type audience, but it eventually had a much wider appeal, the spokeswoman said. There is a desire among carriers to encourage people of that age group to use wireless phones as their only phones, so Sprint's target audience makes a lot of sense, McMahon said.

As for the style of the ads, McMahon said humor in advertising is always tricky. "When it's successful, it's fabulously successful. When it's not successful, it means people just didn't get it."

Hey. Guess they got it.

SURFING USA California customers who sign up for Internet telephony service from USA Talks.com can make free in-state long-distance calls through October. The company, which offers a flat monthly rate for phone-to-phone Internet calls, plans to offer discounted long-distance calling in 34 major metropolitan areas by November.

STARTING SMART Internet service provider Verio Inc. last week announced a marketing agreement with U S West !nterprise and vendor ZyXel to provide discounted pricing on ISDN service to Colorado businesses. Through the "Start Smart" program-which includes Verio's service, ZyXel's routers and U S West !nterprise's lines-customers should save more than $1500, the company says.