Dan traded his car for a pickup and started hauling the displays to gift and card shops in the Washington area. "With limited capital, we thought the best way to market this was in places where people were predisposed to buy a sentimental greeting," he says. The deal was simple: if the owner allowed the display in the store, he or she would get half of the $6.95 that it cost to send one song.
It worked -- sales began trickling in. At that point, the songs were still being sent from the personal computer in Tim's apartment, using only a local phone number. But soon customers who'd bought their Send-a-Song packages in Washington were calling from as far as Texas and California to see if they could send songs elsewhere.
Seeing the potential, Venture America invested another $40,000. That was enough to fund more displays and the addition of an 800 number on a 20-line system. And at Moore's behest, Send-a-Song moved into cramped quarters in Vienna, Va.
The company's first big break came in 1992. "I thought this story would have good press appeal, particularly for Valentine's Day," Dan says. "So in early February we paid $1,500 to a public-relations firm to see if they could make something happen."
Did it ever. Word came that on February 11 -- three days before Valentine's Day -- Send-a-Song would be highlighted in the "tip-off" box at the top of the front page of USA Today's "Life" section.
"I thought that might be a little too good," Dan says. "I was petrified -- we had 12 hours to get ready. We thought the phones would ring off the hook, and we wouldn't get to them all. We called all our family and friends to be operators. Then we worried that we didn't have enough gear. So we raced out and bought $20,000 worth of phones and computers. We borrowed the office next door and had hardware and cables all over the place -- it looked like the underbelly of the Starship Enterprise. We worked all night to put it together."
The next day, February 11, there it was. "Send your Valentine a song by phone," ran the tip-off copy. It briefly described the service and listed the 800 number needed to place an order.
The first calls came from deejays who'd spotted the blurb. Dan did 20 live radio interviews that day. Clearly, the concept had pop-culture cachet. Then customers kicked in. Till then, the best day had brought 100 calls. But on February 11, more than 3,000 poured in, and that pace kept up for a few days. The operators took credit-card orders, issued PINs, and provided a sampling of the songs. "We had to stop taking orders," Tim recalls. "Our capacity was going to be maxed out for Valentine's Day delivery."
"As frantic as it was, there was almost a tangible sense of something being born," says Dan. "This thing was coming to life."
The money folks took notice. A fund-raiser with several dozen "angel" investors the previous month had netted only $10,000. But after the Valentine's Day bonanza, they put $170,000 into the company. Venture America weighed in with another $100,000. One investor, a D.C. stockbroker named Gene Jewett, rushed over with a check for $15,000 even as the telephonic frenzy was at full tilt. Later he added $50,000 more.
"This is a major deal," Jewett says. "I've never seen the emotional response to a card or a letter that I've seen to this. Women are nutso about it. I know several sharp female investors who wanted to know where to send their checks after trying it with their husbands.
"Marketing is the issue here," he adds. "They need a lot of money to get name recognition to grow big quickly. I'm working right now to get them $5 million. If the service is marketed right, this could be a $1-billion company."
* * *
By this past June, however, the brothers had raised about $500,000. With orders running 300 to 500 a day, they were still operating in the red, to a tune of a projected $275,000 loss for 1993. They expect their cash flow to turn positive soon, though, as their new marketing and distribution strategies unfold.
It's clear that aggressive promotion works for them. Eager to build momentum, they launched a $75,000 public-relations blitz in the first quarter of 1993. It generated heavy publicity, particularly around Valentine's Day.
"The response to this is unbelievable," says Kevin Foster, an account executive at the Newlin Co., a Manhattan public-relations firm that helped pilot the campaign. "When you tell media people about the service, it's hard for them to conceptualize it. But then we send them a song list and some free access codes and let them try it. That's the key. Once people try Send-a-Song, they love it."
USA Today ran another Send-a-Song tip-off. CNN Headline News mentioned the company at the top of the hour for a couple of days. More than 30 TV stations across the country carried a story about the service, and dozens of big newspapers gave it some play. Over last Valentine's Day weekend, some 60,000 orders were processed. The company now has the infrastructure to cope with that kind of volume. Last year Tim duplicated his prototype technology on a large computer system at Call Interactive, in Omaha. A business unit of First Data Corp. (the offspring of a joint venture between AT&T and American Express Information Services), Call Interactive is a telephone service bureau that was ideal for Send-a-Song.
"We contracted with them, and they process the orders now," Tim says. "They can handle 10,000 incoming and outgoing calls almost simultaneously. That would make comfortably for 50,000 calls an hour, which you might get on peak days."
Technically, the system is very smooth. The music's fidelity is superb, and the song roster has grown to nearly 200 choices. They are divided into 14 categories -- birthday, friendship, congratulations, get well, and so on. Love themes fall into four sections -- top hits, contemporary, classics, and sexy. Selections range from Elvis Presley's "All Shook Up" to "I Want Your Sex," by George Michael. Among the most popular is Stevie Wonder's "I Just Called to Say I Love You."
The company doesn't send the entire song but sends a clip lasting about 80 seconds, featuring the most familiar verse and a chorus or two. "At that length," Dan says, "you don't get bored."
Sending a song is a snap. New customers calling the 800 number reach one of the 1,500 live operators at Call Interactive. They take down your major credit-card number and verify your account standing in seconds. They get your name and address, then assign you a nine-digit access code. That's it -- you're set to send a song. If you don't know which one, you can sample a few.
