1-800-PODCAST

This week, two stories about the strange power of the 1-800 number.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Roman Mars?

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• 1:16Roman Mars?

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• 1:45Roman Mars?

  This is 99% Invisible. I'm Roman Mars, and I'm here with reporter Daniel Ackerman. Hey, Dan.

• 1:52Speaker 01

  Hi, Roman.

• 1:53Roman Mars?

  So you reached out to us because you wanted to tell us about a very specific tool that you say completely revolutionized American consumer culture and created the blueprint for the modern retail economy. It was like big words, if true.

• 2:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. So when you think about how many of us shop today, it's something that you can do whenever and wherever you want. Like, you could be in bed at 3:00 AM, hit a couple buttons on your phone, and the next morning, there's a vacuum cleaner sitting on your doorstep. And that shopping impulse is not bound by time or distance, right?

• 2:25Roman Mars?

  Right.

• 2:25Speaker 01

  Well, you can trace this 24/7 shopping mentality back to the 1960s, when AT&T introduced a revolutionary technology for commerce. And this is something that almost everyone listening has used at some point in their lives. And if you haven't figured it out yet, Roman, I'm talking about the inward-wide area telephone service, or INWATs for short.

• 2:48Roman Mars?

  That wasn't what I had in mind, but okay, keep going.

• 2:51Speaker 01

  All right, all right. So just in case anyone listening isn't a complete telephony nerd, this technology is more commonly known as the 800 number.

• 3:09Roman Mars?

  Oh, yes, of course. I've used many 800 numbers in my lifetime, but I don't know if I ever really considered it a technology. But of course it is.

• 3:16Speaker 02

  It's a really shockingly understudied part of the American economy, of American culture, of American society. Compared to something like advertising in general or television, the bookshelf on the history of telephony is pretty small.

• 3:31Speaker 01

  That is Rick Pop. He's a historian at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. And he says that the 800 number was originally introduced by AT&T, not necessarily for shopping purposes, but because they were trying to solve another problem for businesses, which was that long-distance calling was really expensive for their customers.

• 3:52Speaker 02

  Ordinary telephone users almost never made long-distance calls. I mean, they were so expensive.

• 3:58Speaker 01

  So if you were an average person, you might place a long-distance call every now and then to wish your grandma in St. Louis happy birthday. But long-distance calling was basically a luxury at this time. Average consumers definitely did not want to have to pay a long-distance charge for something mundane, like calling up a business to order a pair of jeans.

• 4:19Speaker 02

  If it was time-sensitive enough, then maybe you'd call and you'd eat the costs of the long-distance call. But for the most part, it was written communication.

• 4:29Speaker 01

  Now, if you're a large company or retailer fielding calls from consumers all over the country, it would make sense to take on those long-distance charges for your customers. There was at least one way that customers could reach businesses toll-free, and that was by collect calling. Roman, you remember collect calling?

• 4:47Roman Mars?

  Yes, I made a lot of collect calls. I had a lot of relatives in faraway places. In the early days, at least, you would actually dial zero, reach an operator, give them your name, and then they would make the call and ask if they would accept the charges on the other end. And if they said yes, you got connected. And if they said no, you just got disconnected. But in the beginning, you actually had to talk to an operator.

• 5:08Speaker 01

  Exactly. And for the younger crowd, I couldn't find an actual news clip showing how collect calling works. But here's a clip from Dr. Strangelove, which I think does the trick.

• 5:18Speaker 03

  No, I'm perfectly serious, operator. The president, yes, the president of the United States. I'm sorry, I haven't got enough change. Could you make this a collect call, operator? Just one second, operator. They won't accept the call. Have you got 55 cents?

• 5:35Roman Mars?

  Yeah, that's pretty much how it worked.

• 5:37Speaker 01

  Right. And as that clip shows, in the 1960s, toll-free calling was a really inefficient process, right? Because you had to dial an operator, and then the charges needed to be accepted by the company.

• 5:49Roman Mars?

  Or in the case of Dr. Strangelove, the president would have had to accept the charges.

• 5:53Speaker 01

  Exactly. And so AT&T, which was the largest phone company in the world at the time, they wanted to make this easier. They wanted to streamline this whole process. And that's one reason why they introduced INWATs, aka the 800 number, to automate that toll reversal. So no longer would a company have to go through this operator middleman. A business could just purchase an 800 number, which would automatically signal to AT&T, hey, don't charge our customers who are making the call, charge us, the business that's receiving the call, instead.

• 6:25Roman Mars?

  So this was first introduced in the 1960s, you said? And what did the early days of the 800 number look like?

• 6:32Speaker 01

  Well, it was pretty experimental. Companies were still just trying to figure out how to use this technology profitably. And the initial results were kind of mixed. Rick Pop told me about one of the earliest companies to get an 800 number. It was this pretty established catalog retailer called Alden's. Now, they were a competitor of Sears, so they sold run-of-the-mill catalog stuff, like toys, clothes, kitchen appliances. But what Alden's tried to do was to take on this new 800 number technology and promote it as something futuristic, where they could take customer orders at light speed.

• 7:09Speaker 02

  They came up with this idea shortly after INWATs, the 800 number is introduced, to run this really splashy 16-page advertisement in the Saturday Evening Post to basically promote the hell out of this 800 number that they had set up, which they called Jet Phone Service.

• 7:26Speaker 01

  Jet Phone Service. It's sleek, it's high-tech. A reminder that passenger jet travel was pretty new and glamorous at the time. And Alden's wanted to make the feeling of dialing an 800 number feel just like stepping onto a sleek new jet plane. So they set up 20 different 800 lines all ready to receive the onslaught of incoming orders through this new 800 system. But Rick Pop says they never actually came. Only about 5% of customer orders after that ad campaign came by phone. The rest were just done the old way. Someone filled out a paper form, wrote a check, put it in an envelope, stamped it, mailed it in. The same slow process that they've been doing since the dawn of mail-order retail.

• 8:10Roman Mars?

  Yeah, the same slow, sort of high-friction shopping that had always happened.

• 8:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, the cultural habit of kind of instant shopping, instant gratification, it just wasn't there. And as one ad industry writer put it at the time, "The public is, quote, 'not used to the convenience as yet,' end quote." But that would change as we get into the 1970s, thanks in part to another technology that was gaining popularity at the time, the credit card.

• 8:37Speaker 04

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• 8:54Roman Mars?

  The credit card is kind of a requirement for this all to work seamlessly.

• 8:58Speaker 01

  Right.

• 8:59Roman Mars?

  Like, now you mention it. Like, calling a 1-800 number only sort of reduces friction in one small part of the chain. Like, the credit card really makes the long-distance ordering more possible.

• 9:11Speaker 01

  Right. I mean, there were other ways to pay over the phone before credit cards. Like, you could have a store charge account. Or you could use something called cash on delivery, where you basically pay the delivery person when the item arrives. But credit cards made this whole process just way more convenient. And they really unlocked the 800 number's potential for shopping.

• 9:34Speaker 05

  You always want to look your best, but the last thing you have time to do is shop. That's why there's the Spiegel catalog. It's filled with all the looks you love.

• 9:45Speaker 01

  So this is a TV ad for Spiegel that was also a former mail-order retailer that had previously sold things like furniture. And they eventually pivoted to women's workwear.

• 9:56Roman Mars?

  That is quite a rebrand.

• 9:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, but Spiegel was able to transform during the 800 number era to extend past business hours into a 24/7 retail model. It wanted to serve busy, working parents who put the kids to bed at night and then had to cram in their shopping before they went to sleep. And this was a really lucrative model for Spiegel.

• 10:18Speaker 02

  You could make a telephone call at, say, 9:00, 10:00 o'clock at night, right? You could act on the impulse of wanting to buy something in these parts of the day when it just wouldn't have been conceivable to purchase something, right? Marketers want folks to act on their impulse when the impulse is strong, and the 800 number makes that more possible.

• 10:39Roman Mars?

  Right. So American consumers are now finally able to give in to that instant gratification of shopping at any time of the day.

• 10:48Speaker 01

  Yes, they are not time-limited in making potentially financially ruinous decisions. And another thing that happened that really made 800 numbers take off in the 1980s was the breakup of AT&T.

• 11:01Speaker 06

  As of today, the nationwide Bell telephone system dissolves into seven regional companies. The breakup of AT&T has left many people confused and prompted one musical group to record a satirical song.

• 11:20Speaker 01

  If you wanted a toll-free number, it was probably being issued by AT&T. Now, the company was a monopoly, and so those numbers were pretty expensive to get. But after an antitrust lawsuit in the early 80s, AT&T was forced to break into several other companies to encourage competition. And after that happened, prices for 800 numbers started to fall. And suddenly, small businesses that could not afford a toll-free line before, well, now they could.

• 11:51Roman Mars?

  Imagine owning the world's greatest love songs. Call 1-800-818-6806 to order the ultimate love songs collection. To order your Betty Crocker Baconfield, call 1-800-765- To order 12 fascinating issues of Zoo Books for $19.95, call 1-800-441-2400. Baconfield.

• 12:09Speaker 01

  I don't really know what a Betty Crocker Baconfield is, but people started to buy them with 1-800 numbers. They started to buy Zoo Books and pretty much anything else you can think of.

• 12:19Roman Mars?

  So, once the 800 number becomes more widespread, how much commerce was actually done over these toll-free lines?

• 12:26Speaker 01

  Quite a bit. By the mid-1990s, more than $130 billion worth of goods and services were sold via 800 numbers. And that amount was nearly 2% of the entire country's GDP.

• 12:38Roman Mars?

  Holy crap, like 2%? That's as much like as military spending.

• 12:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a lot of impulse shopping. And pretty soon, companies realized that 800 numbers were not just good for selling stuff, they were also a really good way to publicize a business itself. There was this rush to buy the best vanity numbers for marketing purposes. And this is the point where we get to those 1-800 numbers that a lot of us know by heart today. So, we're talking about phone numbers like 1-800 lawyers.

• 13:07Speaker 03

  Call 1-800 lawyers right now. The call is free, the advice is free, and we stay open 24 hours, 7 days a week. We're open New Year's Eve at midnight. So, call 1-800 lawyers. We're there, right now.

• 13:20Speaker 01

  Love to celebrate New Year's Eve with a call to 1-800 lawyers. And then there was, of course, also 1-800 Flowers.

• 13:28Speaker 07

  When you want to send your best wishes with flowers, call us and we'll make all the arrangements. 800 Flowers, just call our name.

• 13:37Speaker 01

  Before that company was called 1-800 Flowers, it started as just a single brick-and-mortar florist in New York. But that 800 number gave it the platform to reach millions of new customers all over the country, basically any time of the day.

• 13:52Roman Mars?

  I feel like originally, I thought of the 800 prefix as a kind of area code, but it's actually kind of the opposite of an area code, right? Because an area code signifies a specific place and a specific time zone. But when you're calling an 800 number, you have no idea where the person picking up the phone is located or what time it is for them. You just know that they are available to help you and that it's free.

• 14:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's true. The 800 prefix does kind of feel like it's removed from time and space. But the funny thing is that if you were calling an 800 number during the peak of the toll-free boom, there's actually a pretty good chance that the person picking up the phone was based in one specific place. And that was Omaha, Nebraska.

• 14:34Roman Mars?

  Okay, say more.

• 14:36Speaker 01

  Okay, I'll explain. So, the 800 number had a huge impact on companies' physical footprints because toll-free calling made it possible to centralize customer service into like one giant call center in one place, rather than staffing all these local branch offices in every city across America. And Omaha actually became the place where many of these call centers ended up.

• 15:02Roman Mars?

  So, why was Omaha chosen for this great honor?

• 15:06Speaker 01

  So, Omaha actually had a lot of phone capacity. It had about twice the capacity for incoming calls that you'd expect for a city of its size. And that's because after World War II, the Air Force chose Omaha as the hub for its Strategic Air Command. What that means is, they basically said, "Okay, Omaha is going to be the place that will survive a Cold War nuclear apocalypse." And they laid a lot of phone lines coming into Omaha over the course of the 1940s and 50s.

• 15:35Roman Mars?

  So, Omaha was like primed and ready for the 1-800 era.

• 15:39Speaker 01

  Ready to answer the call. And corporate executives also kind of had this belief that people from Omaha had like a mythical, neutral, American accent. So, when call center workers in Omaha picked up the phone, they would feel familiar to most Americans. Obviously, a lot to unpack there, which we're not going to get-

• 15:59Roman Mars?

  Yeah, for real. But, you know, we can keep going.

• 16:03Speaker 01

  But Omaha does quickly become this epicenter of the new toll-free economy. And by the second half of the 1980s, if you dialed an 800 number, there was a pretty good chance you'd hear something like this.

• 16:16Speaker 05

  1-800 Live Aid, this is Jody. May I help you?

• 16:19Speaker 01

  So, this is Jody Lovallo. She's an amateur historian from Omaha. And she worked in one of these call centers back in their heyday of the mid-1980s. And she says they pretty much transformed the economy of Omaha.

• 16:32Speaker 05

  There was just big call centers all across the city, and they were all hiring. It was pretty easy to get hired. There was, you know, more jobs than there were people.

• 16:41Speaker 01

  So, overall, more than 10,000 Omahans started working in call centers, basically serving as the back end of American capitalism. And Jody told me it was a pretty good job for someone in her stage of life.

• 16:53Speaker 05

  My favorite shift was like 4:00 to midnight. I liked to have my days free for personal endeavors. It was air-conditioned. We all had the little headsets. And I remember sitting together with just people I had gone to high school with that I had like recruited.

• 17:07Speaker 01

  So, Jody was working in a big room with dozens of cubicles, populated in part by her high school friends. And her call center answered calls on behalf of like a whole bunch of different companies and organizations. So, whenever a call came in, a script would pop up on her computer screen to, you know, sell Kraftmatic adjustable beds or fake diamond rings for $5. And Jody said there was a real discernible kind of rhythm to how these calls came in.

• 17:36Speaker 05

  We would be sitting there not having any calls. And all of a sudden, they would all light up, and it would be everybody from like Alabama in a certain zip code. And something had flashed, you know, on the TV, like, "Call to get your diamond L-ring." And then everybody like in that zip code would call at the same time. And then we would all get busy like at the same time because we were like, "Oh, the commercial just went on."

• 17:56Speaker 01

  And there were times when the calls became overwhelming. A good example of this actually came before Jody's time, back in August of 1977, just after the death of Elvis Presley. Companies started flooding the TV with commercials, selling Elvis merchandise, and greatest hits albums.

• 18:14Speaker 07

  20 giant hits, 2 big albums, plus the exclusive bonus picture book. Yours for just $7.98. To order this final tribute to Elvis, call toll-free 1-800-228-2290.

• 18:24Speaker 01

  And so many people called the 800 number to get their piece of Elvis history. It actually crashed the system, and the regional phone lines around Omaha went down.

• 18:34Roman Mars?

  It's the power of the king and the 1-800 number combined. This is unbeatable.

• 18:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, but she said that her favorite calls to take were for Live Aid. I don't want to date you, Roman, but you must remember Live Aid, right?

• 18:46Roman Mars?

  Oh, yeah, for sure, absolutely. It was a big deal.

• 18:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, so just for anyone, Gen Z or younger, Live Aid was this huge televised concert, and it happened in July of 1985. The concert was a fundraiser to support famine relief in Ethiopia. And the lineup was just unreal. There was Queen, U2, David Bowie, Run DMC, Paul McCartney, Tina Turner, Led Zeppelin, Madonna, just like so many incredible artists. And looking back, like, this may have been the high-water mark for 800 numbers because the way that Live Aid raised money was by having viewers call the 800 numbers on their screens during the concert.

• 19:25Speaker 07

  To make your pledge, dial 800 LIVEAID. We've got thousands of operators ready to take your call. If the lines are busy, please keep trying. The number is 800-L-I-V-E-A-I-D. We guarantee every dollar given by the public will go to Africa. Call now.

• 19:41Speaker 01

  And many of those callers were speaking directly to call center workers in Omaha, like Jody.

• 19:46Speaker 05

  Sometimes they'd call and they'd go, "Can we speak to Cyndi Lauper? Is Cyndi Lauper there?" Because they thought we were there, you know, at the stage. They had the impression that you are very connected to the event. You're very there. But we were not. We were, you know, in a call center, answering phones in Omaha. And you can look at how much money was raised for those events. And a good lion's share of it came through our hands.

• 20:09Speaker 01

  A quick note, Cyndi Lauper did not actually perform at Live Aid.

• 20:13Roman Mars?

  That's an important fact check.

• 20:14Speaker 01

  She had to drop out because of a health issue. But the event was pretty successful. It ended up raising well over $100 million. And Omaha call centers made it happen. You know, these call centers were the engine rooms that made the entire 1-800 business model run. And in many ways, they created the blueprint for the modern 24/7 retail economy that we live in today.

• 20:37Roman Mars?

  I mean, it created the blueprint, but it's been a while since I actually called a 1-800 number.

• 20:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's probably an observation a lot of people have had. The demand for 800 numbers did go downhill in the 1990s and early 2000s. And one reason for that is because of cell phones. You know, the original intent for Inwatts was to make long-distance calling more affordable for customers. But, you know, today, your cellphone plan probably has some kind of flat rate or unlimited nationwide calling. And so now, there's basically no financial incentive for a company to get a 1-800 prefix for their customers to call.

• 21:13Roman Mars?

  Right, because today, it's the same price for me to call someone in Oakland as to dial you in Boston. Like, it's just, it's minutes. That's just how plans work.

• 21:23Speaker 01

  Right, and also, like with so many other industries, consolidation and outsourcing sent a whole bunch of these call center jobs overseas.

• 21:31Roman Mars?

  Yeah, and then, of course, there's the internet because then Amazon comes on board.

• 21:34Speaker 01

  Right, the internet made the 800 number pretty much obsolete as a shopping platform. And then, the task of reaching a business directly, that got shifted to digital channels too, like live chat, email, apps, and web forms.

• 21:48Roman Mars?

  Yeah, I also feel like calling, like making a voice call to customer service is just not something- You know, my kids do very often, it fills them with great anxiety to actually talk to someone on the phone and they try to avoid it at all costs. Like yesterday, the oldest kid in the house was talking on the phone and it blew my mind. Like, I've only seen them use their phones for TikTok and playing video games, really.

• 22:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, I should say, though, that there are still some call centers in Omaha. Like, if you called 1-800-VE-OMNI to make a reservation at an Omni Hotel, you might talk to someone there in Omaha.

• 22:24Roman Mars?

  So if you're like itching to hear the neutral, quote unquote, neutral, American accent, you can dial the Omni Hotel.

• 22:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it won't cost you a dime. So, you know, these 800 numbers, they're less popular, maybe, than they used to be, but many businesses still have them, they're still around, and that's because there are a lot of folks out there who rely on them.

• 22:46Speaker 07

  Not everybody has high-speed internet, not everybody has unlimited data on their phones, or a lot of people don't have the tech literacy to navigate a chatbot. So for seniors, rural communities, people with low incomes, the 1-800 number is a way to offer free democratic lifelines to the companies that they need to be able to contact. That 1-800 number remains the friction-free portal to get a live person online for free without having to pay a dime.

• 23:15Speaker 01

  This is Stephen Minnick. Stephen worked in the telecom industry for years, and now he teaches at Georgetown. And he said, on top of that accessibility factor, another reason we do still use 1-800 numbers is that they're just more legitimate.

• 23:30Speaker 07

  Well, I think, you know, it's easy to think of them as being relics of the, maybe, the 1980s, the 1990s, but really, 1-800 numbers have evolved from just a way to kind of reach out to a company into a tool that really talks about trust and accessibility.

• 23:47Speaker 01

  So that first piece, trust, there's research showing that people just inherently prefer calling an 800 number compared to a specific area code.

• 23:56Speaker 07

  When you think about a consumer sees a toll-free number, it signals to them that the business is established. We have a lot of spam calls spoofing local area codes now, and so a recognized toll-free number gives people a sort of a shield of legitimacy.

• 24:13Speaker 01

  To be clear, there are scammers who use 800 numbers, but they are much less common, and it's just harder to get away with since businesses need to register those numbers with the phone company. The irony here is that companies still use these 800 numbers to signal trust and accessibility and the ability to talk to a human, but these days, you're increasingly likely to dial an 800 number and reach a chatbot.

• 24:38Roman Mars?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, that is, that is a problem. But I'm always happy when I see an 800 number. Like, if I, if I have a problem on a website and there is no number to reach, I get extremely frustrated and mad, so that makes me happy that they're still hanging on. Well, it was nice to speak to you, a real-life human and not a chatbot. Thanks for bringing us this story, Dan.

• 25:00Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me. I think you should actually set up a 1-800 line for the show, like 1-800-99-PI-Pod or something, and then, you know, everyone can call in with some great story ideas for you.

• 25:12Roman Mars?

  I mean, I think we might get quite a few good story ideas from people calling in, but we would also get, like, a lot of cranks who'd just be just like, why don't you do more stories about fonts?

• 25:19Speaker 01

  Right, and then you'd be footing the bill for all that.

• 25:22Roman Mars?

  Exactly. Just like, I'd be just paying for my own misery. Dan, this is really fun, I appreciate it.

• 25:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, thanks for having me.

• 25:38Roman Mars?

  When we come back from the break, we revisit a story about the toll-free number's ultimate form. Stay with us.

• 25:46Roman Mars?

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• 28:27Roman Mars?

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• 29:03Roman Mars?

  Our friend Sean Cole has always been impressed by lawyer ads.

• 29:08Speaker 01

  I would say more totally confused by lawyer ads. I mean, I'm just like, like, really, like, is disaster footage or your cousin wearing a judge's robe the best way to represent your practice? But I started looking into them, these lawyer ads in particular, the sort of like fly-by-90 bottom feeder seeming ones.

• 29:25Speaker 04

  This is attorney blah blah.

• 29:28Speaker 07

  Brown and Grubin. Phillips and Associates. Lowell the Hammer Stanley. And I'll get you lots of money for your blah blah injuries. Broken bones, burns, paralysis.

• 29:36Speaker 04

  Victim, victim, victim. Call me. Call now. Call me right now, 459-CA.

• 29:46Speaker 01

  And I fell down the well into the Byzantine crazy subterranean wonderland of lawyer advertising regulation, which has eras to it and factions, and there's this seemingly endless civil war in lawyer nation about whether lawyers should advertise their services at all. But first, let's just enjoy and indulge ourselves in some of the more excessive, nay, surreal examples of the genre. Maestro?

• 30:25Roman Mars?

  Here we go.

• 30:28Speaker 03

  If you've been in an auto accident, here are a few important tips. Don't give a

• 30:33Speaker 01

  So these are the kinds of commercials you see at 3:00 in the morning on basic cable when everything is going wrong in your life. You've got your sort of central casting lawyer in front of a bookshelf, for whom every syllable and hand gesture is a hurdle.

• 30:46Speaker 03

  We understand the serious effects that an auto accident can have on your life.

• 30:50Speaker 01

  But then, you have your performers.

• 30:52Speaker 07

  Permanently injured, size matters. The bigger your check, the better. I'm Lowell the Hammer Stanley.

• 30:58Speaker 01

  I love Lowell the Hammer Stanley. There are images of airborne cars engulfed in flames playing behind him right now.

• 31:07Speaker 07

  I don't stop hammering until the size of your check satisfies you. Call me, and let's talk about size. Lowell the Hammer Stanley.

• 31:15Speaker 01

  There's actually more than one hammer in this tool bench.

• 31:18Speaker 07

  I'm Jim Abbott, the Texas Hammer. I avenge injustice for the injured, the mistreated, and the ignored.

• 31:24Speaker 01

  There's even more than one hammer named Jim.

• 31:26Speaker 03

  I'm Jim the Hammer Shapiro.

• 31:30Speaker 01

  I swear to God, I thought this one was a joke.

• 31:32Speaker 03

  I cannot rip out the hearts of those who hurt you. I cannot hand you their severed heads, but I can hunt them down and settle the score. I'll squeeze them for every dime I can.

• 31:45Speaker 01

  So those are the crusaders. I mean, it's still all about money, but, you know, they have a Captain America protector quality about them. And a few of these things, though, is just pure unfettered crassness.

• 31:56Speaker 03

  I was in pain, and I called Spencer and Associates, and he changed my pain to rain.

• 32:00Speaker 01

  At which point, money falls all over her body, usually only happens in the strip club. The pain-to-rain alchemical process is fundamental to lawyer television. Your injury is a commodity, and apparently, cashing in is a cinch.

• 32:14Speaker 03

  Call me, it's just that easy. Call me.

• 32:16Speaker 07

  It's just that easy. Call 1-877-CE-BRAD.

• 32:23Speaker 03

  And, you know, look, I grant you, these things are, they're almost majestically terrible, right?

• 32:29Speaker 01

  This is Bob Garfield, co-host of the NPR/WNYC show On the Media. For 25 years, he was the ad critic for Advertising Age magazine.

• 32:37Speaker 03

  There is no attempt for subtlety, it is the hard sell. There have been a few of these lawyers over the years who have tried to be funny. You know, a lot of personal injury lawyers sometimes, in order to cast themselves in their own ads, will do some Some sort of nominally comic scenario that they're star of.

• 32:58Speaker 07

  How can you tell when a lawyer is lying? When his lips are moving. That is funny and lawyer jokes are great. But let's get serious.

• 33:07Speaker 03

  But basically, the key words are, "Call now." Call the rely on group now.

• 33:16Speaker 04

  Because, obviously, the cynical view is like, here are some sharp-

• 33:20Speaker 03

  Call the Goldwater Law Firm now.

• 33:23Speaker 05

  If you or a loved one has had a de pue hip replacement, call the Goldwater Law Firm right now.

• 33:29Speaker 03

  You know, I have a certain grudge and respect. Having looked over and over and over for 25 years at extremely artful executions of fairly obscure creative ideas, I am so delighted to see somebody saying, "I got something to sell. I think you should buy it. Call now."

• 33:50Speaker 04

  It's honest.

• 33:51Speaker 03

  It's honest. Now, sometimes of dubious legality, because the ads themselves frequently skirt the legality of solicitation. Different jurisdictions have different rules.

• 34:03Speaker 04

  This is what I was talking about in the beginning. Rules regarding what you can and can't say in an ad? Who can appear in your ad and what they're allowed to say about you? All of that is regulated, to tighter or looser degrees, by each individual State Bar Association and State Supreme Court. Because, as proven by history, lawyers will tout themselves exactly as loudly as they're allowed to.

• 34:29Speaker 04

  See, back in the 19th century, you'd see ads for attorneys on the front page of newspapers alongside ads for doctors and saddle and harness manufacturers. But in 1908,

• 34:41Speaker 04

  the American Bar Association put in new rules saying, "All instances of self-laudation," that's what they called it, "self-laudation, defy the traditions and lower the tone of our high calling, and are intolerable."

• 34:56Speaker 04

  Business cards were OK. That ban lasted about 70 years. And then, in 1976, the law clinic of Bates & Osteen ran one little classified in the Arizona Republic, saying, "Do you need a lawyer? Legal services at very reasonable fees. Divorce, adoption, bankruptcy, blah, blah, blah." And in short, the Arizona Bar got mad and suspended the two lawyers. Bates & Osteen appealed all the way to the US Supreme Court, and, in the now infamous Bates versus State Bar of Arizona, the court ruled that lawyers have the same freedom of speech as everybody else. Gavel, gavel. Lawyers can advertise. Then all hell broke loose.

• 35:37Speaker 06

  That pretty much opened up the floodgates.

• 35:39Speaker 04

  This is Elizabeth Tarbert, the ethics counsel for the Florida Bar. She runs the department that regulates lawyer advertising there.

• 35:45Speaker 06

  There was kind of a Wild, Wild West situation where lawyers were advertising any way they wanted, because there weren't regulations, where there had been just flat-out prohibitions. So Florida actually had a couple of different blue-ribbon commissions, and they adopted the first set of rules. And because Bar leadership was very concerned about what statements lawyers were making in their advertisements to try to get clients.

• 36:10Speaker 04

  Elizabeth Tarbert wasn't with the Bar back then, so she doesn't know what those ads looked like. But an attorney I talked to named Steve Miller does.

• 36:18Speaker 03

  Look, when I first started practicing-

• 36:20Speaker 04

  He's a divorce lawyer with offices in Florida and Massachusetts.

• 36:23Speaker 03

  I worked for a woman in Florida doing personal injury work. And she was one of, I won't say she was one of the first on TV, but she did a lot of TV advertising. And her ad went something like this. You hear a car crash.

• 36:40Speaker 03

  You would hear a car crash, hear the sirens, and then they threw a doll, a baby doll, into the picture, which...

• 36:52Speaker 03

  I'll never forget it. I won't say her name. But it was just the worst thing that I ever seen. I mean, and so I'm sure that had something to do with the Bar coming in and saying, "Look, you can't do music. You can't do dramatizations. You can't have your clients come on. You can't do that stuff."

• 37:09Speaker 04

  It actually goes way beyond that. Florida has some of the strictest guidelines in the country for these ads. For instance-

• 37:15Speaker 06

  Testimonials. If a lawyer writes the testimonial, him or herself, that would be misleading. That's not the person's actual experience. If it's not the person's actual experience with a lawyer, they're not qualified to judge the lawyer, then those things would be misleading.

• 37:30Speaker 04

  Now, think of how many lawyer commercials you've seen that use testimonials. The insurance company kept asking me to hurry up and sign a release. I was thinking, "What's the rush?" Of course they wanted Jason to sign quickly. Of course some of them are written by the attorneys or their advertising consultants. Oftentimes, the actual client doesn't even appear in the ad. I'm Jason Smith. He is not Jason Smith. He's an actor performing a testimonial, which is also prohibited in Florida. Nor are you allowed in Florida to have actors playing authority figures, like cops and judges, saying how great the lawyer is. Nor are you allowed to have actual cops and judges saying how great the lawyer is.

• 38:09Speaker 06

  People inherently respond to authority figures, whether they're real or not. So we prohibit their use in advertisements.

• 38:15Speaker 04

  Does Robert Vaughn fall under that category?

• 38:18Speaker 06

  I wouldn't consider Robert Vaughn an authority figure. He's an actor. But he would fall within the prohibition in the same rule about using the voice or image of a celebrity.

• 38:26Speaker 04

  Again, kind of pervasive in other states.

• 38:29Speaker 06

  Tell the insurance companies you mean business. Tell them you've hired Jacobian Myers. They go after your rights, piece by piece by piece,

• 38:37Speaker 04

  until justice has been served, or they'll be in court. Call Jacobian Myers.

• 38:48Speaker 04

  Elizabeth Tarbert says the rules are meant to protect the public, that people should pick a lawyer based on what she calls "objective selection criteria", rather than fancy pants promises and sound effects. If you break the rules, the penalties are not really that dramatic. The worst that might happen is that you'll get what's known as a "public reprimand." The Bar sends out a press release, so your reputation is kind of marred. But it's not like you're going to be disbarred.

• 39:18Speaker 04

  So that's Florida. There are a few other states that are strict. Iowa and Texas, weirdly, given that it's home to one of the hammers. Insurance companies rarely play fair and hand over a fair award. They must be hammered and hammered before they see the light. I'm Jim Abbott. Massachusetts and Connecticut are still pretty Wild Westy. And if you're a national firm, operating in a bunch of jurisdictions, you have to comply with multiple sets of rules. That's what Lucian Para has to deal with. He's a lawyer with Adams & Rees in Memphis. And among other things, he advises nationwide firms on their advertising. And sometimes he'll be looking over the disclaimer rules, for example. And he'll be like-

• 39:56Speaker 07

  OK. State A says you got to say this. But State B, if I say what State A says, State B is going to say, "Well, I can't say exactly that." So I got to weave it together somehow. It is a morass.

• 40:06Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 40:06Speaker 07

  It does what it's, I think, in my opinion, intended to do, which is it deters lawyer advertising to some significant extent.

• 40:14Speaker 04

  Now, Lucian's state, Tennessee, is pretty loose. In fact, it's been widely reported of late as the state where you'll see lawyer ads featuring space aliens, giant robots, and both dogs and cars that can talk.

• 40:27Speaker 07

  Guys, come here. Huh? All the cars in town are talking about you. Talking cars. They say you're the go-to guys for car wrecks.

• 40:34Speaker 04

  And even now, more than 35 years later, Lucian says there's a cohort of lawyers who will see an ad like that and say, "Look what Bates versus State Bar of Arizona hath wrought."

• 40:46Speaker 07

  There are many lawyers today, many lawyers today, who feel that much that is wrong with the profession today, if not all that is wrong with the profession today, dates from Bates. That lawyer advertising turned us from a profession into a business. And they just think it's undignified for lawyers to be on television pitching their services, generally, much less talking to dogs or aliens. They just think that demeans the profession.

• 41:19Speaker 04

  And you don't have to look too far down the road in Tennessee to find one of those lawyers, namely Matt Hardin, a personal injury attorney in Nashville with his own practice.

• 41:28Speaker 07

  I'm sorry, I've got a big bunch on this. The first half of it's about the history of advertising.

• 41:34Speaker 04

  Last year, he and the Tennessee Association for Justice, which is a group of plaintiff's lawyers, filed two petitions to the State Supreme Court asking them to change the advertising rules in Tennessee so that they essentially look more like the ones in Florida. There was a public comment period. Some First Amendment advocates got involved. And ultimately, the court said no. But Matt is determined to keep trying. And I asked him. And so do you think Bates was the beginning of the end? Like, the Big Bang that created the downfall of the stature of lawyers?

• 42:09Speaker 07

  I do. I mean, if you look in our history in the 50s and 60s, you had lawyers being seen as proponents of justice. You know, you have things as far back as, like, To Kill a Mockingbird. But those, what I would call the halcyon days of positive public perception of attorneys, seem to be long gone. What most people see, unfortunately, is this unsavory advertising, and they base their opinions on lawyers on that advertising. But my biggest concern about this is how it affects the jury pool and makes people think that you're just out for easy money.

• 42:42Speaker 04

  That is, if people start thinking plaintiffs and their attorneys are just out for easy money, they might get cynical about the process. And cynical people become cynical jurors, and no one gets a fair trial anymore. That's the calculus. And by the way, Matt's not opposed to advertising writ large.

• 42:58Speaker 07

  I advertise myself.

• 43:00Speaker 04

  Though not on TV.

• 43:01Speaker 07

  I advertise in movie theaters.

• 43:02Speaker 04

  You advertise in movie theaters?

• 43:03Speaker 07

  I do.

• 43:04Speaker 04

  And online. His ads sound like this.

• 43:06Speaker 05

  What to do after an accident? Call Matt Hardin Law, your experienced personal injury law firm. Our personal injury attorney-

• 43:14Speaker 04

  So you know, very different tone. And visually, too. There are just images of gavels and Ionic columns and Matt in this ad. Which makes me wonder if maybe there's not something more basic about his objections to the dog and robot commercials. Is it just that you think the ads aren't classy?

• 43:31Speaker 07

  No, I don't think it's up to me or anyone else to make a judgment over what the class of an ad is.

• 43:36Speaker 04

  But do you think they're not classy?

• 43:39Speaker 07

  Um, I don't have an opinion on that one way or another. I mean, that's not really what I'm trying to do.

• 43:44Speaker 04

  Really? Because I think all of us have an opinion on that one way or the other.

• 43:49Speaker 07

  I believe some people are actually turned off by that type of advertising, but I don't believe, I don't think they would do it if it didn't work.

• 43:56Speaker 04

  You think it works?

• 43:57Speaker 07

  Absolutely, it does. They do work, yes. They do work for those that they appeal to.

• 44:01Speaker 04

  This is Lowell the Hammer Stanley.

• 44:05Speaker 07

  I am the hammer. They are the nails.

• 44:09Speaker 04

  Wow. That is, it's just, it's just like watching YouTube.

• 44:13Speaker 07

  That's what it is.

• 44:14Speaker 04

  I don't think I mentioned Lowell the Hammer Stanley practices in Norfolk, Virginia. He's been a lawyer for more than 30 years. And truthfully, I was a little nervous about asking him what the hell was up with his ads. But he answered the question before I even got to it.

• 44:28Speaker 07

  I mean, the ads are, the ads are not sophisticated.

• 44:32Speaker 04

  I'm glad that you know that.

• 44:36Speaker 07

  I, if I saw my ad, me personally, I would never call me.

• 44:41Speaker 04

  Really?

• 44:42Speaker 07

  Yes. The ads do not appeal to me. They are over the top, and some might even consider them tasteless. But, but they are not designed to appeal to people like me who listen to NPR and watch PBS. They're, they're, they are designed to appeal to people who watch, shows like Jerry Springer, or things like that, who are good and fine, and decent people. And, but they are used to commercials. And they, a lot of lawyers are going to fight for them. And that's what those ads are designed to appeal to.

• 45:22Speaker 04

  It sounds a little like a class distinction.

• 45:25Speaker 07

  Well, the answer, it, it, it may be considered a class distinction. If you are an educated person who's a PhD, or a banker, or you, you don't need to get your lawyer from a, from a, from an ad. You have friends, you know somebody. You, you have a family lawyer, you go to them. This, this is designed for hardworking, a blue collar, a bus driver, a little league coach, somebody who's, who's hurt, and doesn't know where to turn, doesn't have a lawyer, and is afraid of lawyers, and wants somebody who's going to fight for them. That, that's what they're designed to appeal to.

• 45:57Speaker 04

  And if that's true, there are almost certainly people in Florida whom those ads would appeal to. And so finally, I asked Elizabeth Tarbert at the Florida Bar, if I called myself the Hammer and screamed and had flaming blazing behind me, would that be okay there?

• 46:16Speaker 06

  I think there are aspects of that that are not objectively verifiable, which is required under our rules, that you hammer them. That's, that's a subjective term.

• 46:24Speaker 04

  Right. We, I can't prove that I hammer.

• 46:27Speaker 07

  Attention accident victim, victim, victim. If someone, somewhere owes you big, big money, it pays to hire a heavyweight, a heavyweight. I'm Lowell the Hammer Stanley. 459, I'm the Avenger for the

• 46:40Roman Mars?

  That story was produced back in 2014 by Sean the Hammer Cole. A version of it originally aired on the podcast Life of the Law, and was edited by Julia Barton. 99% Invisible was reported this week by Daniel Ackerman and edited by Vivien Le. Mixed by Martine Gonzalez. Music by Swan Real. Fact checking by Sona Avakian. Kathy Tu is our executive producer. Kurt Kohlstedt is the digital director. Delaney Hall is our senior editor. The rest of the team includes Chris Berube, Jason DeLeon, Emmett Fitzgerald, Christopher Johnson, LaShma Dawn, Joe Rosenberg, Kelly Prime, Jacob Medina Gleason, Talon and Rain Stradly, and me, Roman Mars. The 99% Invisible logo was created by Stefan Lawrence. We are part

• 47:22Roman Mars?

  of the SiriusXM Podcast family, now headquartered six blocks north in the Pandora Building in beautiful Uptown Oakland, California. You can find us on all the usual social media sites, as well as our own Discord server. There's a link to that, as well as every past episode of 99PI at 99pi.org.

• 48:07Roman Mars?

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