CALLING CARD COMPANY LOOKING FOR AGENCY
By Adnews Staff
Loyalty Telecommunications of Toronto will launch a customer rewards program in the next few months that will offer free long distance phone service as a bonus for patronizing certain businesses. The company is looking for an agency to promote this service, president Stephen Johnston told Adnews last week. Loyalty will make a shortlist in a month and a final decision by late May. Johnston said the budget for the account could be over $3 million. The company created a print ad in-house to introduce itself, which it ran in The Financial Post earlier in March. Loyalty says it will buy long distance time from phone companies with money that Loyalty's clients divert from their advertising and promotional budgets. These companies will give their customers calling cards that can be used to collect free long-distance minutes with each purchase. They cash in these minutes by dialling a 1-800 number when they want to make a long distance call. "In these tough economic times the corporate community must respond by offering their loyal customers 'real value rewards' not 'dream value rewards' like travel, which is a reward for the distant future," Johnston says in a release. Loyalty is a Canadian company owned by a group of investors.