1-800-PODCAST

ROMAN MARS: This is 99% Invisible. I’m Roman Mars. And I’m here with reporter Daniel Ackerman. Hey, Dan. 

DANIEL ACKERMAN: Hi, Roman. 

ROMAN 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. Big words, if true. 

DANIEL ACKERMAN: 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 a.m., 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? Well, you can trace this 24/7 shopping mentality back to the 1960s when AT&T introduced a revolutionary technology for commerce. 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. 

ROMAN MARS: [LAUGHING] That wasn’t what I had in mind. But okay, keep going. 

DANIEL ACKERMAN: Alright, alright, so just in case anyone listening isn’t a complete telephony nerd, this technology is more commonly known as the 800 number. 

EMPIRE: 800-588…

SLAP CHOP: 1-800-574-8366… 

STAR TREK: Call 1-800-STARTREK… 

GENERAL: Call 1 800-GENERAL now…

ROMAN 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. 

RICK POPP: 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. 

DANIEL ACKERMAN: That is Rick Popp. 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. 

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

DANIEL ACKERMAN: 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. 

RICK POPP: If it was time sensitive enough, then maybe you’d call and you’d eat the cost of the long-distance call. But for the most part, it was written communication. 

DANIEL ACKERMAN: 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? 

ROMAN MARS: Yes, I made a lot of collect calls. I had a lot of relatives in far away 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 say no, you just got disconnected. But in the beginning, you actually had to talk to an operator. 

DANIEL ACKERMAN: 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. 

LIONEL MANDRAKE: No, I’m perfectly serious, operator. The President. Yes, the President of the United States… Oh, I’m sorry, I haven’t got enough change. Um, could you make this a collect call, operator? Just one second, operator… They won’t accept the call. Have you got 55 cents? 

ROMAN MARS: [CHUCKLING] Yeah, that’s pretty much how it worked. 

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

ROMAN MARS: Or in the case of Dr. Strangelove, the President would have had to accept the charges. 

DANIEL ACKERMAN: 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, you know, 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.”

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

DANIEL ACKERMAN: Well, it was pretty experimental. You know, companies were still just trying to figure out how to use this technology profitably. And the initial results were kind of mixed. Rick Popp 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 tried to do was to take on this new 800 number technology and promote it as something, like, futuristic, where they could take customer orders at light speed. 

RICK POPP: 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. 

DANIEL ACKERMAN: 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 on to 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 Popp 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. 

ROMAN MARS: Yeah, the same slow sort of high friction shopping that had always happened. 

DANIEL ACKERMAN: 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. 

BANK AMERICARD AD: With only one credit card, the Bank Americard, you can charge almost anything, almost anywhere. TheBank Americard gives you instant credit from Boston to Honolulu, from London to Bangkok. The Bank Americard will soon be coming to southern Ohio… 

ROMAN MARS: The credit card is kind of a requirement for this all to work seamlessly. Now that you mention it, calling a 1-800 number only sort of reduces friction in one small part of the chain. The credit card really makes the long-distance ordering more possible. 

DANIEL ACKERMAN: 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. 

SPIEGEL AD: You always want to look your best. But the last thing you have time to do is shop. That’s why there’s a Spiegel catalog. It’s filled with all the looks you love…

DANIEL ACKERMAN: 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. 

ROMAN MARS: Huh! That is quite a reprint. 

DANIEL ACKERMAN: Yeah, but Spiegel was able to transform during the 800-number era to extend past business hours into a 24/7 retail model. You know, 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. 

RICK POPP: You could make a telephone call at, say, 9, 10 o’clock at night. 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. Marketers want folks to act on their impulse when the impulse is strong, and the 800 number makes that more possible. 

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

DANIEL ACKERMAN: 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. 

NEWSCASTER: 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… 

BREAKING UP IS HARD ON YOU: [SINGING] They say that breaking up is hard to do.. 

DANIEL ACKERMAN: But 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. 

ULTIMATE LOVE SONGS COLLECTION AD: Imagine owning the world’s greatest love songs. Call 1-800-818-6806 to order the Ultimate Love Songs Collection… 

BETTY CROCKER BAKE ‘N FILL AD: To order your Betty Crocker Bake ‘n Fill, call 1-800-765… 

ZOO BOOKS AD: To order 12 fascinating issues of Zoo Books for $19.95, call 1-800-441-2400… 

ROMAN MARS: [LAUGHING] Bake ‘n Fill. 

DANIEL ACKERMAN: I don’t really know what a Betty Crocker Bake ‘n Fill is, but people started to buy them with 1-8000 numbers. They started to buy Zoo Books and pretty much anything else you can think of. 

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

DANIEL ACKERMAN: 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. 

ROMAN MARS: Holy crap. Like, 2%? That’s as much as military spending. 

DANIEL ACKERMAN: 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.

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

DANIEL ACKERMAN: Love to celebrate New Year’s Eve with a call to 1-800-LAWYERS. And then there was, of course, also 1-800-FLOWERS. 

1-800-FLOWERS: If you want to send your best wishes with flowers, call us and we’ll make all the arrangements. 1-800-FLOWERS. Just call our name… 

DANIEL ACKERMAN: 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. 

ROMAN 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 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. 

DANIEL ACKERMAN: 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. 

ROMAN MARS: Okay, say more. 

DANIEL ACKERMAN: Okay, I’ll explain. So, the 800 number had a huge impact on the company’s 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. 

ROMAN MARS: So why was Omaha chosen for this great honor? 

DANIEL ACKERMAN: So Omaha actually had a lot of phone capacity. It had about twice the capacity for incoming calls than 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. 

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

DANIEL ACKERMAN: 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 gonna get–

ROMAN MARS: [LAUGHING] Yeah. For real. But we can keep going.

DANIEL ACKERMAN: 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’s a pretty good chance you’d hear something like this. 

JODI LAVALLO: 1-800-LIVEAID. This is Jodi. May I help you? 

DANIEL ACKERMAN: So this is Jodi 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. 

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

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

JODI LAVALLO: My favorite shift was, like, four to midnight. I like 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 recruited. 

DANIEL ACKERMAN: So, Jodi 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 Craftmatic Adjustable Beds or fake diamond rings for $5. And Jodi said there was a real discernible kind of rhythm to how these calls came in. 

JODI LAVALLO: 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 ring.” And then everybody in that zip code would call at the same time. And then we would all get busy at the same time, like, “Oh, the commercial just went on.”

DANIEL ACKERMAN: And there were times when the calls became overwhelming. A good example of this actually came before Jodi’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. 

ELVIS GREATEST HITS ALBUM AD: 20 giant hits, 2 big albums, plus the exclusive bonus picture book. Yours for just $7.98. To order this final tributary, just call toll-free, 1-800-228-2299… 

DANIEL ACKERMAN: 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. 

ROMAN MARS: It’s the power of the King and the 1-800 number combined. This is unbeatable. 

DANIEL ACKERMAN: 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? 

ROMAN MARS: Oh yeah, for sure. Absolutely. It was a big deal. 

DANIEL ACKERMAN: 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, this may have been the high watermark 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. 

CASEY KASEM: 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-LIVEAID. We guarantee every dollar given by the public will go to Africa. Call now… 

DANIEL ACKERMAN: And many of those callers were speaking directly to call center workers in Omaha like Jodi. 

JODI LAVALLO: Sometimes they’d call and they’d go, “Can we speak to Cyndi Lauper. Is Cyndi Lauper there?” They thought we were there at the stage. They have the impression that you are very connected to the event, you’re very there, but we were not. We were 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. 

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

ROMAN MARS: [LAUGHING] That’s an important fact check. 

DANIEL ACKERMAN: 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. 

ROMAN MARS: I mean, it created the blueprint. But it’s been a while since I actually called a 1-800 number. 

DANIEL ACKERMAN: 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 InWATS was to make long-distance calling more affordable for customers, but, you know, today your cell phone 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. 

ROMAN 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 minutes. That’s just how plans work. 

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

ROMAN MARS: Yeah. And then of course there’s the internet because then Amazon comes on board. 

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

ROMAN MARS: I also feel like calling, like making a voice call to customer service, is just not something 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. 

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

ROMAN MARS: So if you’re, like, itching to hear the, quote unquote, “neutral American accent,” you can dial the Omni Hotel. 

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

STEPHEN MINNIG: 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 chat bot. 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. 

DANIEL ACKERMAN: This is Stephen Minnig. 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. 

STEPHEN MINNIG: Well, I think, you know, it’s easy to think of them as being relics of 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. 

DANIEL ACKERMAN: So that first piece–trust–there’s research showing that people just inherently prefer calling an 800 number compared to a specific area code. 

STEPHEN MINNIG: When you think about it, 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 sort of a shield of legitimacy. 

DANIEL ACKERMAN: 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. 

ROMAN MARS: Yeah. Yeah, that is a problem. But I’m always happy when I see an 800 number. 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 chat bot. Thanks for bringing us the story, Dan. 

DANIEL ACKERMAN: Thanks for having me. I think you should actually set up a 1-800 line for the show, like 1-800-99PIPOD or something. And then everyone can call in with a great story. 

ROMAN MARS: I mean, I think we might get quite a few good story ideas from people calling in. But we would also get a lot of cranks who would just be like, “Why don’t you do more stories about fonts?”

DANIEL ACKERMAN: Right. And then you’d be footing the bill for all that.

ROMAN MARS: Exactly. That’d be just pain for my own misery. Dan, this was really fun. I appreciate it. 

DANIEL ACKERMAN: Yeah, thanks for having me. 

ROMAN MARS: When we come back from the break, we revisit a story about the toll-free numbers ultimate form. Stay with us. 

[AD BREAK]

ROMAN MARS: Our friend, Sean Cole, has always been impressed by lawyer ads. 

SEAN COLE: I would say more totally confused by lawyer ads. I mean, 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-nighty, bottom-feeder-seeming ones. 

LAW AD MONTAGE: This is Attorney Blah, Blah… / Brown and Crouppen… / Phillips and Associates… / Lowell “The Hammer” Stanley… / I’ll get you lots of money for your blah blah injuries… / Broken bones, burns, paralysis… / Victims! Victims! Victims… / Call me… / Call me… / Call now… / Call me right now… / 459-CASH…

SEAN COLE: 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? 

ROMAN MARS: Here we go. 

LAW AD: If you’ve been in an auto accident, here are a few important tips…

SEAN COLE: So, these are the kinds of commercials you see at three 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. 

LAW AD: We understand the serious effects that an auto accident can have on your life…

SEAN COLE: But then, you have your performers…

LOWELL “THE HAMMER” STANLEY: Permanently injured? Size matters. The bigger your check, the better. I’m Lowell “The Hammer” Stanley… 

SEAN COLE: I love Lowell “The Hammer” Stanley. There are images of airborne cars engulfed in flames playing behind him right now. 

LOWELL “THE HAMMER” STANLEY: 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…

SEAN COLE: There’s actually more than one “Hammer” in this tool bench. 

JIM ADLER: I’m Jim Adler, the Texas Hammer. I avenge injustice for the injured, the mistreated, and the ignored… 

SEAN COLE: There’s even more than one “Hammer” named Jim. 

JIM “THE HAMMER” SHAPIRO: I’m Jim “The Hammer” Shapiro…

SEAN COLE: I swear to God I thought this one was a joke. 

JIM “THE HAMMER” SHAPIRO: I cannot rip out the hearts of those who hurt you! I cannot hand you their severed head! But I can hunt them down and settle the score! I’ll squeeze them for every dime I can… 

SEAN COLE: So those are the crusaders. I mean, it’s still all about money, but they have a Captain America protector quality about them. In a few of these things though, it’s just pure unfettered crassness. 

SPENCER & ASSOCIATES AD: I was in pain. And I called Spencer and Associates, and he changed my pain to rain…

SEAN COLE: At which point money falls all over her body. It 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. 

LAW AD MONTAGE: Call me. It’s just that easy… / Call me. It’s just that easy… / Call 1-877-SEEBRAD… 

BOB GARFIELD: And, you know, look, I grant you these things are almost majestically terrible, right? 

SEAN COLE: 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. 

BOB GARFIELD: 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 sort of nominally comic scenario that they’re a star of. 

LAW AD: 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…

BOB GARFIELD: But basically, the key words are “call now.” “Call the Rely On Group now.”

SEAN COLE: Because obviously the cynical view is, like–

BOB GARFIELD: “Call the Goldwater Law Firm now.”

GOLDWATER AD: If you or a loved one has had a DePuy hip replacement, call the Goldwater Law Firm right now…

BOB GARFIELD: But you know, I have a certain grudge of 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.” It’s honest. Now, sometimes it’s dubious legality because the ads themselves frequently skirt the legality of solicitation. Different jurisdictions have different rules. 

SEAN COLE: 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. 

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, the American Bar Association put in new rules saying “all instances of self-laudation,” that’s what they called it, “defy the traditions and lower the tone of our high calling and are intolerable.” Business cards were okay. That ban lasted about 70 years. And then in 1976, the law clinic of Bates and O’Steen 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…” And in short, the Arizona bar got mad and suspended the two lawyers. Bates and O’Steen appealed all the way to the U.S. 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. 

ELIZABETH TARBERT: That pretty much opened up the floodgates. 

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

ELIZABETH TARBERT: 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. 

SEAN COLE: 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. 

STEVE MILLER: Look, when I first started practicing… 

SEAN COLE: He’s a divorce lawyer with offices in Florida and Massachusetts. 

STEVE MILLER: 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… [CHUCKLING] You would hear a car crash, hear the sirens, and then they threw a doll–baby doll–into the picture. I’ll never forget it. I won’t say her name, but it was just the worst thing that I’d ever seen. 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 dramatization. You can’t have your clients come on. You can’t do that stuff.” 

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

ELIZABETH TARBERT: 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 a person’s experience with a lawyer, they’re not qualified to judge the lawyer, then those things would be misleading. 

SEAN COLE: Now, think of how many lawyer commercials you’ve seen that use testimonials. 

JASON SMITH: The insurance company kept asking me to hurry up and sign a release. I was thinking, “What’s the rush?” 

SEAN COLE: Of course some of them are written by the attorneys or their advertising consultants. Oftentimes the actual client doesn’t even appear in the ads. 

JASON SMITH: I’m Jason Smith…

SEAN COLE: 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. 

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

SEAN COLE: Does Robert Vaughn fall under that category? 

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

SEAN COLE: Again, kind of pervasive in other states. 

ROBERT VAUGHN: Tell the insurance companies you mean business. Tell them you’ve hired Jacoby and Meyers. They go after your rights piece by piece by peace until justice has been served or they’ll be in court. Call Jacoby…

SEAN COLE: Elizabeth Tarbert says the rules are meant to protect the public and 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. 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. 

JIM ADLER: 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 Adler…

SEAN COLE: 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 Pera has to deal with. He’s a lawyer with Adams and Reese 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… 

LUCIAN PERA: State A says you got to say this. But if I say what state A said, 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. It does what it’s, I think, in my opinion, intended to do, which is it deters lawyer advertising to some significant extent. 

SEAN COLE: 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. 

TALKING CAR LAW AD: Guys, come here! All the cars in town are talking about you. They say you’re the go-to guys for car wrecks… 

SEAN COLE: 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!”

LUCIAN PERA: There are 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. 

SEAN COLE: 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. 

MATT HARDIN: I’m sorry, I’ve got a big bunch on this. The first half of it’s about the history of advertising… 

SEAN COLE: 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 looked 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–

SEAN COLE: And so do you think Bates was sort of the beginning of the end, like the big bang that created the downfall of the sort of stature of lawyers?

MATT HARDIN: 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 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. 

SEAN COLE: 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. 

MATT HARDIN: I advertise myself. 

SEAN COLE: Though, not on TV. 

MATT HARDIN: I advertise in movie theaters. 

SEAN COLE: You advertise in movie theaters? 

MATT HARDIN: I do. 

SEAN COLE: And online. His ads sound like this. 

MATT HARDIN AD: What to do after an accident? Call Matt Hardin Law, your experienced personal injury law firm… 

SEAN COLE: 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 you wonder if maybe there’s not something more basic about his objections to the dog and robot commercials. 

SEAN COLE: Is it just that you think the ads aren’t classy? 

MATT HARDIN: 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. 

SEAN COLE: But do you think they’re not classy? 

MATT HARDIN: I don’t have an opinion on that one way or another. I mean, that’s not really what I’m trying to– 

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

MATT HARDIN: 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. 

SEAN COLE: You think it works? 

MATT HARDIN: Absolutely it does. 

LOWELL “THE HAMMER” STANLEY: They do work, yes. They do work for those that they appeal to. 

SEAN COLE: This is Lowell “The Hammer” Stanley. 

LOWELL “THE HAMMER” STANLEY: I am the hammer. They are the nail! 

SEAN COLE: Wow. It’s just like watching YouTube. 

SEAN COLE: 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.

LOWELL “THE HAMMER” STANLEY: The ads are not sophisticated. 

SEAN COLE: I’m glad that you know that. 

LOWELL “THE HAMMER” STANLEY: [LAUGHS] If I saw my ad–me personally–I would never call me. 

SEAN COLE: Really? 

LOWELL “THE HAMMER” STANLEY: Yes. The ads do not appeal to me. They are over the top, and some might even consider them tasteless. But they are not designed to appeal to people like me who listen to NPR and watch PBS. They are designed to appeal to people to watch shows like Jerry Springer or things like that–good and fine and decent people. But they are used to commercials. And they bought a lawyer who’s going to fight for them. And that’s what those ads are designed to appeal to.

SEAN COLE: It sounds a little like a class distinction. 

LOWELL “THE HAMMER” STANLEY: Well,it may be considered a class distinction. If you are an educated person who’s a PhD or banker, you don’t need to get your lawyer from an ad. You’ve got friends. You know somebody. You have a family lawyer. You go to them. This is designed for a hard-working, blue-collar bus driver or little league coach or somebody 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’s what they’re designed to appeal to.

SEAN COLE: 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–

SEAN COLE: If I called myself “The Hammer” and screamed and had flaming blazing behind me, would that be okay there? 

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

SEAN COLE: Right. I can’t prove that I hammer. 

LOWELL “THE HAMMER” STANLEY: [RAPPING] Attention, accident victim, if someone, somewhere, owes you big, big money, it pays to hire a heavyweight. I’m Lowell “The Hammer” Stanley. 459-CASH! I’m the avenger for…

ROMAN 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 Vivian Le. Mix by Martín Gonzalez. Music by Swan Real. Fact-checking by Sona Avakian. 

Kathy Tu is our executive producer. Kurt Kohlstedt is our digital director. Delaney Hall is our senior editor. The rest of the team includes Chris Berube, Jayson De Leon, Emmett FitzGerald, Christopher Johnson, Lasha Madan, Joe Rosenberg, Kelly Prime, Jeyca Medina-Gleason, Talon and Rain Stradley, and me, Roman Mars. The 99% Invisible logo was created by Stefan Lawrence. 

We are part 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 Discord server. There’s a link to that, as well as every past episode of 99PI, at 99pi.org.