How Toll Free Branding Makes a Difference for Millions

We know the stories of an American Dream: The tales of blood, sweat, and tears that warm the hearts of all entrepreneurs. The vanity branding of 1-800-FLOWERS is the Horatio Alger of the touchtone. With the mnemonic spelling for phone numbers having been introduced in the early 1980’s, the timing couldn’t have been more perfect.

Sometimes that one-in-a-million connection pays off in millions. For James McCann, a bartender with a background in social work, the concept of reinventing the retail model and becoming a digital entrepreneur before the Internet age seemed too steep of an ambition in 1976. But upon the opening of the doors to a series of flower shops within the New York area, that’s exactly what he stumbled upon.

In 1986, McCann purchased a failed floral company in Texas called 800-Numbers. He acquired the company deep in the red without legal counsel—accruing a debt of over $7 million. With bankruptcy on the horizon, McCann’s grandmother told him, “This bankruptcy thing? We don’t do that. Find another way.” And so it goes.

Thankfully, with the invention of the mnemonic number in the 1980s by William Alexander, the flower company capitalized on two huge opportunities: AT&T featuring the company in an advertisement which aired during the 1992 Summer Olympics and CNN’s coverage of the Persian Gulf War prompting advertisers to pull out, bringing more advertising space for McCann and co.—at the request of Ted Turner.

The company later embarked on the dot-com bubble. With an 800 toll free number as their respective brand, there was no better option than to rebrand itself as 1-800FLOWERS.com, which is still in existence today. This branding element is known as a “teledotcom” today. It’s difficult to argue whether it was the mnemonic spelling or having one of the first reliable .com domain names that built businesses into what they are known as today. It’s safe to say that it pays off to have the best of both worlds.

Today there is a wide array of new options for toll free numbers and toll-free prefixes for industry-specific services (food, medical, transportation, etc.). NUMSPELL is also available to provide assistance in finding the best vanity phone number for your brand. There are also toll free reverse lookups, robust options for direct response tracking, and even a new mobile site to help operate 800 toll free services from your Smartphone or tablet.

So what new success tales or industry game-changers does the future hold for us? Only the future can tell. However, one thing is for sure: a toll-free number isn’t a trend, it’s a trendsetter.