VONAGE AD HERE

For one reason or another, some companies have chosen not to exhibit, or even participate, much at this year's Supercomm. Some are conserving cash; others just feel they get lost in the cacophony. But one company doesn't have to be here. Vonage will get all the exposure it needs and then some just by staying home.

That was one reason right there. Staying home just got them one mention that almost 100,000 people will read this week just by picking up Telephony. And that's only the beginning. The company will be mentioned thousands of times this week in speeches, presentations and panel discussions.

We journalists intentionally remain blissfully ignorant of the machinations of advertising; however, basic lessons from Marketing 101 teach that every mention a company gets — be it in a print medium such as this or from being uttered by some subject matter expert — has a dollar value associated with it by those who care about such things.

Vonage (that's two) will be the hands-down winner in advertising dollars spent versus number of hits, or mentions, it gets this week at Supercomm. If last year is any indication, Vonage (three) will be mentioned much more often than its similarly V-initialed Tier 1 nemesis. We gave up counting somewhere in the mid-hundreds the number of times someone mentioned the company by name. That was early on Day 1. If people weren't mentioning Vonage (four) directly, they were referring to Vonage-like (five) services.

No other company of such small stature has ever caused such a stir. So if service providers really want to shun the little upstart, and vendors really want to sell to those service providers, they should stop mentioning its name as if they were talking about Kleenex or Xerox copies.

On the other hand, such a strategy — if it were one and not just a Freudian slip — could work. If said often enough, the name Vonage (six) might lose significance and become the equivalent of a photocopy or a snot rag. This takes us to the downside of such so-called advertising: Not every mention is flattering. Last year, comments about the company were qualifiedly favorable, often beginning with the phrase, “Well, you have to hand it to them, they [blah, blah, blah].”

Having survived another year and having been partly responsible for pushing major carriers to accelerate their voice-over-IP plans, Vonage (seven) and Vonage-like (eight) companies can no longer be discussed out-of-hand like precocious children. So the gloves are likely to come off this year.

And carriers have already started to learn that if slighting a company doesn't work at stopping its momentum, all they have to do is get their friends to throw up regulatory roadblocks.