Verizon ingeniously foils Alltel's 'My Circle' plan after all
Fans of the soon-to-be-defunct Alltel Wireless "geeks in shirts" advertising campaign will remember the debut of the 2006 "My Circle" calling plan, where subscribers could choose 10 friends or family members to include in their "calling circles." Folks who were a little older than the guys who appeared in the "Food Court" ad from that campaign -- which helped establish Alltel's entire marketing focus thereafter -- will recall that "calling circles" wasn't a phrase coined by Alltel.
It was MCI that established "calling circles" in 1991, in a breakthrough marketing campaign called "Friends & Family" that helped save the company during its landmark long distance battles against AT&T, and which established database marketing as a serious tool and even a competitive weapon.
Well, it appears the red-shirt Verizon Wireless guy in the food court did come up with a plan to stop "My Circle" after all: Use some of the leverage (and the intellectual property) from having acquired MCI in 2005, to gobble up Alltel (maybe with a little carne asada on the side), and then merge Alltel's database with VZW's to relaunch Friends & Family this morning.
The plan doesn't look all that dramatically different from MCI's: VZW customers who spend $60 per month for a Nationwide Single Line plan with 900 monthly minutes, or who spend $90 per month for a two-line Nationwide FamilyShare plan with 1,400 minutes, may pick five to ten other phone customers on landline or wireless in the US who may not even be Verizon customers (yet...You don't think those parties wouldn't be given incentive to switch, do you?). The company's initial announcement is careful not to say calls to those parties will be free; it says signup is free (thus enabling it to use the word "free"), and it adds that calls to those parties will not be charged against the regular tally of used minutes.
Rollout should be taking place immediately for individual customers, with a version of the service for business customers expected to be launched later this quarter.