Circa 2004 -2005 Comments RE: VoIP: The Movie


 

2004: Covad claims: "We plan to offer VoIP services in all of our markets by the end of 2004. And sure enough, in 2004 GJP Advertising handled Covad's new marketing campaign for VoIP services. The ads involved a series of movie trailers about "VoIP: The Movie" which were designed to look like trailers from a thriller movie. Unfortunately it wasn't at all clear what they're really advertising (though, the phone does seem to play a central part).
For a number of years this was the website for VoIP: The Movie. When the domain expired the new owner of the site used it for reverse mortgages and retirement information. Again the domain's registration expired and the newest owner had decided to return the site to its original roots, namely about the Covad's marketing campaign for its VoIP services.

Content is from the site's archived pages as well as from other outside press sources including the movie's Facebook page which was created in 2014 along with a new blog website.
The current official website for VoIP movie is found at: https://voipmovie.wordpress.com./ where you can find story boards for the campaign.

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Plot Outline

VoIP is a high-tech innovative psychological thriller set in New York. VoIP weaves four stories of ordinary people linked by corrupt and insidious forces infiltrating ‘Voice-over Internet Protocol’ or VoIP systems.

Art dealer, Greg Skinner, is on a routine assignment in Paris when a nightmare is unleashed. Talking with his girlfriend, Joanne, at their apartment via Skype, he witnesses her abduction by a sickening demonic creature. Frantic, Greg flies back to New York but becomes increasingly frustrated with the lack of progress by two detectives working on his case.

In desperation, he turns to an ex-girlfriend now working as a journalist. With her help, he uncovers something seriously unsettling, but in doing so, inadvertently releases the forces that took Joanne into his own life, causing him to spiral into psychological paranoia.

Besieged by horrific images on his computer and plagued with nightmares, Greg takes desperate measures, and in a dramatic turning point, busts genius hacker, Byron Whitworth, from his mundane jail-time community service job of teaching ‘silver surfers’. Together with Byron’s hacking partner, 'Snake', they begin to unravel the sinister truth behind Joanne’s disappearance.

Intriguing, mind-bending, and ultimately disturbing, VoIP throws in twists you won't see coming and will make you seriously question the veracity of what you see with your own eyes.

Directed By James Smith
Written By James Smith
Screenplay By Caroline Spence
Produced By Caroline Spence



 

PRESS 2018 - 2019

 

The best VoIP services for 2019

Want to make calls across the internet for less? Try these great VoIP services By Jon Martindale September 11, 2019

Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP as it’s more commonly known, is increasing in popularity as more people ditch their landlines. Businesses, in particular, can benefit from using VoIP services, which are well known for being cheaper, more versatile, and more scalable than traditional phone services.

The best VoIP service is RingCentral, which offers useful features like unlimited calling and conferencing, internet faxing, and automatic call recording, all at reasonable monthly rates. But if RingCentral doesn’t quite meet your business’ needs, be sure to keep scrolling and check out our other picks for the best VoIP services.

RingCentral

RingCentral is a California-based VoIP company with offices around the world, including the U.K., and is one of the most well-reviewed VoIP services available. With a network backbone in the U.S., there shouldn’t be any increased lag from the company’s headquartered location, and its prices make it hotly competitive with its contemporaries.

Jive Voice

Jive’s approach is especially friendly to small businesses, providing voice services that are 1) unlimited use, which means no extra fees for exceeding monthly usage, and 2) available to anywhere from 1 to 99 users, with customized pricing available for businesses with more than 100 users.

Skype for Business

If you run your own business, especially from home, you may not need much scalability or all the extra call features that some VoIP services provide. In this case, Skype for Business or possibly Skype Meetings are particularly well suited to your needs.

Verizon Business Digital Voice

Maybe your business has already been growing, and you’re looking for a larger service that can cater more specifically to your professional needs. Verizon is here to help with a full-featured VoIP offering that’s tailored toward growing and larger companies. There are plenty of standard features like holding, forward, waiting, call transfers and caller ID, but there are also many advanced features like multiple monitoring options, voicemail to email services, and different online portals that administrators, IT specialists and agents can use to control the service.

 

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Had to happen: Jump ahead more than a decade since the marketing ploy VoIP: The Movie. VoIP is serious. The benefits of VoIP over traditional phone systems are extensive. Virtually every business stands to greatly benefit by implementing this sophisticated communications technology. I ran into a strange Google problem while searching for "local VoIP providers" where the results included large number of hard porn video sites. Totally crazy! I recently read about the problems Google can create for people and businesses when their search reveals inappropriate results, and how difficult it is to address this problem since Google is basically unresponsive, meaning there's really no way to remove Google search results. Here's an informative post about this issue - you'll see it can cause devastating harm. It's one thing to have porn sites show up for a search for your type of business, but another if your privacy has been violated.

However when I was researching VoIP service providers I spent a lot of time looking at a half dozen "top" companies. I narrowed down my choices by speaking with other business owners to see who they had gone with and the pros and cons. I ended up using Pan Terra and have been pleased with the results. Sometimes I think the internet provided too many choices, on the other hand it dose allow you to do very deep research. Anyhow VoIP really has come into its own. VoIP: The Movie seems naive in hindsight, from a marketing point of view, but clever from a purely creative point of view.

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Just Like Netflix Changed TV, VoIP Is Disrupting Phone Service

Can Technological Disruption Affect Every Industry?

In 2018, Accenture analyzed 3,600 companies with annual revenues more than $100M and found that 63 percent of companies are currently facing high levels of disruption. Additionally, 44 percent of companies show signs of being highly susceptible to future disruption.

As part of its “disruptability index,” group chief executive Mike Sutcliff said, “We found that the lower an industry’s digital performance, the more susceptible it is to future disruption.”

VoIP Takes on Big Telecom

The biggest force in an industry disruption, according to Accenture, is “new innovations enabled by technology.”

Despite the Ma Bell legacy of large telephone companies having an apparent stronghold on the telephone industry, there’s a groundswell of consumers who are opting for alternative phone providers that transmit calls over the internet rather than through traditional phone lines or cellular voice services.

These internet-based phone services, collectively called Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), are providing a low-cost and high-tech alternative, and their positioning as a tech disruptor is on par with how Netflix challenged traditional media companies.

VoIP vs. Landline Calling

VoIP’s disruption of traditional landline phone service has been ongoing. In 2010, there were 21 million U.S. subscribers to VoIP. A 2018 FCC report says that as of December 2016, there were 63 million VoIP residential subscribers in the U.S. That’s a 300 percent growth rate in just six years!

 

Businesses that have previously had a stronghold on an industry are increasingly being edged out by technological innovators, or as they’re commonly called, disruptors.
By Dennis Peng | www.ooma.com/

Among households choosing VoIP instead of a landline, consumers using Ooma Telo noted benefits such as the service’s access to advanced 911 safety features, increased call quality, customizable blocking of spam callers, and so much more. Additionally, residential customers report an average of $1,167 in savings on phone service over three years, excluding taxes and fees.

For businesses choosing VoIP instead of a landline, companies get an advanced phone service that’s affordable, flexible, and scalable. With Oooma’s small business phone, businesses benefit from high-quality, professional phone service with extension dialing, music on hold, conference bridge, and many other features that can incur add-on costs elsewhere. After making the switch, a small business with three users could save $6,185 over three years, excluding hardware, taxes, and fees. That’s a nice financial boost for using a phone service that’s won the PC Magazine Business Choice Award for six consecutive years.

VoIP vs. Cellular Phone Calls

VoIP is also positioning itself as an alternative to high-cost cellular phone service.

Just as Netflix’s mobile app made it possible to watch a TV show while you were away from home, the mobile VoIP market is providing consumers with low-cost phone service that’s accessible wherever there’s internet.

In particular, Ooma’s free calling app has provided residential customers with a way to make calls through their home phone services. Customers value the app as a way to place affordable phone calls via Wi-Fi, as a solution for international calls while traveling, or as a remote 911 tool.

In turn, business customers using Ooma Office’s free calling app appreciate how a mobile device can be used as part of a networked business phone system. For managers catching up on work off-site, delivery drivers needing to be in-sync with HQ, or the growing force of telecommuters, the app lets users answer incoming calls to their work line and place outgoing calls using their work number. It doesn’t get any more streamlined than that.

These are some of the reasons why the mobile VoIP market in North America is currently $9 billion and expected to grow to $23.5 billion by 2024.

 



 

PRESS 2004 -2005

You can see an example of the trailer at: www.adforum.com/creative-work/ad/player/51294/voip-movie/covad.

 

Covad to launch VoIP service

The DSL provider joins a bandwagon load of broadband rivals in offering local and long-distance phone service, which it plans to kick off by the end of this year.

BY BEN CHARNY | FEBRUARY 9, 2004 | cnet.com

Covad Communications Group announced plans to introduce a residential and business telephone service, a move that marks the entry of another top-tier broadband provider into the phone business.
The digital subscriber line (DSL) service provider said Monday that it will begin selling unlimited local and long-distance calling to its business broadband customers by the end of the year. After that, it will introduce phone service plans for its residential broadband subscribers. It plans to announce subscription rates and the service introduction schedule by midyear.

Covad's jump into the telephone service businessis not a surprise, said Jon Arnold, an analyst at Frost & Sullivan. Every major U.S. broadband provider now either sells some kind of phone service or has announced plans to do so. Covad's competitors in the cable broadband industry have been the most eager, as they hope to use cheaper dialing plans to woo customers away from local phone companies.

The technology behind these services is voice over Internet Protocol (), which makes phone calls using the Internet Protocol, a popular method for sending data from one computer to another. After years of overpromising and underdelivering, VoIP is generating significant interest among telecommunications carriers, businesses and consumers, thanks to significant improvements in quality of service.

"Everybody's trying to jump on the bandwagon," Arnold said. "Every ISP is looking to get into voice and (to) do it before their customers are lost to others."

Arnold described Covad's calling plans as on par with those offered by Vonage, 8x8, VoicePulse and other Internet phone service providers, which have a total of 300,000 subscribers, according to most estimates. But the audience for subscription services is expected to blossom to 5 million by 2006.

 

B2B advertainment

September 17, 2004 | Jennifer RIce brand.blogs.com/
Check out Covad's VoIP: The Movie. The plot's a bit forced, but it's certainly an engaging and entertaining way to get the word out. This is the first time I've seen advertainment for a B2B offering, and I applaud Covad for thinking outside the traditional B2B box.

 

VoIP: The Movie
from the oh,-please-make-it-stop dept

September 17, 2004 | by Mike Masnick | www.techdirt.com/ This is almost painful. A broadband provider trying to push the concept of VoIP (no, they don't deserve any more publicity by being named here) has decided to start an advertising campaign for VoIP that involves a series of movie trailers about "VoIP: The Movie" which are designed to look like trailers from a thriller movie, and which aren't at all clear about what they're really advertising (though, the phone does seem to play a central part). Cue movie trailer voiceover /

This is almost painful. A broadband provider trying to push the concept of VoIP (no, they don't deserve any more publicity by being named here) has decided to start an advertising campaign for VoIP that involves a series of movie trailers about "VoIP: The Movie" which are designed to look like trailers from a thriller movie, and which aren't at all clear about what they're really advertising (though, the phone does seem to play a central part). Cue movie trailer voiceover voice: "No one can escape it, we're all slaves to it....".

 

9/14/2004 BY JONATHAN GREENE | www.atmasphere.net/

VOIP the Movie

No one can escape it, we’re all slaves to it.

Covad has created a fake movie site that looks kind of like what you might expect from CSI The Movie. It’s definitely high quality and well executed (but slow loading) in my opinion. I’d love to see the rest of this campaign to see how it was promoted beyond movie trailers…

The target must be CIO / CTO at Fortune level organizations since the product they show is a dashboard for your company’s telephony. I’d imagine there’s a pretty intense lead generation campaign going to work off the budget it must have cost to produce the site. I would imagine the close time on a lead in this space is many months so there’s probably quite a few moving parts. I don’t know that I would have been duped into checking this out, but am glad I did.

I have become quite interested in VOIP tech as of late (had you not been paying attention) and think things are only going to get hotter in the category. Unlike Andy, I don’t have any clients in the arena just yet…

 

June 6, 2005 | AdNews/

GJP Advertising creates new campaign for Covad

GJP Advertising & Design & Partners of Toronto has begun a new phase of a campaign for US-based Covad Communications Group promoting its voice over IP services. The television creative takes the format of a trailer for a horror movie called "The Ringing." The ad, which broke last week, depicts a woman alone in an office at night being attacked by wires coming out of the walls. The campaign directs viewers to a website at to see an extended version of the purported movie and get information about Covad's services. "We know that movie trailers are the most-watched ads on TV," said John Farquhar, creative director of GJP Advertising. "By creating content in this style we stand a higher likelihood of people tuning in mentally and remembering the Covad brand." The ad, aimed at primarily male IT decision makers, is airing on specialty channels such as Comedy Central and during sports programming on conventional channels. GJP produced a similar campaign for Covad last fall. That effort presented a mystery film called "VOIP: The Movie."

 

VOIP Marketeers Are Askin for It

Mark Sullivan, Reporter, Light Reading 2005
SAN FRANCISCO -- The 2005 National Cable &

Telecommunications Association (NCTA) National Show -- The VOIP business is still young, and it has some unpolished swagger about it. This was never more apparent than at a panel on cable VOIP marketing here Monday, when Pulver.com legal counsel Jonathan Askin filled in for his boss, Jeff Pulver.

Below is an edited version of this article.....

“I don’t think that marketing ‘IP’ or ‘telephony’ is what the buying public really wants,” says Time Warner Cable’s senior VP of VOIP marketing, Sam Howe, during a question-and-answer session. Howe says consumers have “100 years of buying experience with the telephone,” and his company does not want to market VOIP is a wholly different service. 

Later in the conversation, Askin again drew Howe offsides with a remark about the cable industry being uninterested in developing mobile VOIP offerings. "At the end of the day, the decision about VOIP is made by the head of the household, and we have to make sure that she is happy,” Howe says. “But now mobile is just not where the bread and butter is.”

True to his claim of knowing what doesn’t work in VOIP marketing, Askin trotted out some notable missteps from other VOIP players. 

“AT&T spent $50 million advertising its VOIP product during the Olympics,” Askin says, pointing out that only about 53,000 people signed up for the service. “If you look at it, it cost them about a thousand dollars for every one of those customers.”

Covad’s “VOIP: The Movie” ad campaign presumed too much about the VOIP knowledge of consumers, Askin says. “I don’t know if anybody from Covad is here, but their ads -- I didn’t even understand their commercials."

Askin was kinder to Vonage Holdings Corp., the company his boss founded. “Now Vonage’s marketing campaign is state of the art. I’d gladly stop being a lawyer to run the marketing campaign for Vonage,” he says. “I’m hearing that Vonage is now thinking of postponing its IPO and getting a hundred million dollars more to use in its marketing campaign.”

"That's not true," says Vonage's VP of corporate communications, Brooke Schulz, who Light Reading contacted on Tuesday. Vonage's most recent financing round "is intended to take us through to profitability," she says.

Whatever marketing approach is used, Askin says there's just not a single spokesman for VOIP who'll take it to the mass market. “We are still looking for the Steve Jobs of the VOIP industry; we need someone to come along -- and frankly I know it’s not [from] my company," Askin says.

Of course, it's worth noting that even without a VOIP version of Steve Jobs, and even without Askin's marketing suggestions, Cablevision and Cox each have approximately 1.3 million VOIP subscribers, while Time Warner Cable is nearing a million. 

“I think that’s all I need to say at this point,” Askin said as he abruptly ended his remarks to a smattering of laughter from the audience.

And isn't the point of VOIP marketing to always leave them laughing?

 

 

VOIPtheMovie.com