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It's quite a phenomenon when history rewrites itself, but many people have asked me:
Did you really create 1-800-DENTIST?
The unequivocal answer is yes. Freddie Joyal (Signed above as Alfred Joyal) created Futuredontics in 1986 and became the sixth licensee [see above contract] of Applied Anagramics, Inc., the corporation belonging to my wife and myself and the parent company of 1-800-DENTIST. We had one more partner in the beginning named Charles Eberle, who began licensing our dental marketing program (advertisements, philosophical ideas for bringing patients and dentists together) and intellectual properties to people in area codes around the nation. Below is the history of what really happened. My wife and I never desired any publicity and we kept a very private profile so our family would have a normal upbringing. After ten years of litigation from our sixth licensee (Joyal's Futuredontics), we finally had enough. However, we can clearly say that Freddie and Gary paid us millions of dollars over the twenty years we owned 1-800-DENTIST, for the privilege of working for us! The month he finished paying us off in 2004, he became the television founder of 1-800-DENTIST, and has proudly accepted many national awards for "his creation".
History:
In 1970, I wrote a little illustrated book with Ed Munter called "Everybody Needs An Elephant" and this landed me a job at the most prestigious radio advertising firms in the English speaking world, "Chuck Blore Creative Services." We had won so many CLIO's for the major advertising houses around the world, and especially for AT&T, that Ma Bell gave Chuck and his daughter, Cathy, their own exclusive phone numbers that spelled out their names. I had no idea such a thing was possible, but twelve years later, when I found out about 800 numbers, I obtained 1-800-336-8478 (DENTIST).
In 1980, my three-year-old began to experience the blackening of his teeth (never having candy or soda pop), so I called the Santa Barbara dental society and asked where I could take my son to have his teeth looked at. The society told me there were only two pedodontists in Santa Barbara and we went to the one who they recommended the highest.
Following their recommendation, my wife took my son to the dentist’s office and after six minutes of our son being in the examining room, my wife heard HIM screaming. She ran into the room only to find my son’s hands tied to the chair as the dentist was probing his mouth. My wife took my son out of the highly recommended dentist and we went to the other pedodontist. Federico Grosso’s office was quite pleasant and we experienced a wonderfully talented and dedicated dentist. Luckily, my son overcame that initial trauma caused by the first dentist and his neo-natal enamel hypoplasia was treated successfully. Incidentally, it was caused by my son drinking apple juice from his bottle. Ooops!
The experience my family had with the dental society led to my wife and I creating a company called The Dental Registry. I hired two artists from UCSB and a photographer in Santa Barbara and created a series of humorous and educational print ads. While investigating marketing models, we researched one of the fastest growing business models in the country: Multi-level-marketing. Much to our amazement, we found that in the most successful MLM of the time, Amway, the largest professional group involved were dentists.
One of my friends from our successful real estate days, David Dodart, was becoming a multi-millionaire with his new MLM corporations, Source, and World-Wide Products. David was grossing over eight million dollars a month with his “MLM’s”, and he took an interest in my dental proposal. We used his model but chose not to have an “endless” line of profits from selling memberships. Rather, I designed a program that would allow members to bring in only two levels of dentists with a ceiling of 5,000 dentists, nationwide. Once we were at the 5,000 membership ceiling, the advertising dollars would be so strong that the last dentists to join would benefit greatly from the new patient growth of their practices.
David taught my assistant, Freddie Joyal, and me how to put on a show from proper lighting to guest speakers and we began to have opportunity meetings around Southern California. Dentists were inviting dentists and soon we were growing. We put in comedic print ads in such magazines as Time, Newsweek, and Sports Illustrated. In 1981, I designed a “family” of soft-sculptured tooth dolls around a foot tall each to be used by dentists to reduce anxiety in their patients. Each doll was designed to be placed in the operatory with built in dental floss, and hang from the ceiling so patients could focus on them. Later, I designed a give-away program for dentists that thanked the patients who made referrals. Each doll, being such an amazing gift from a dentist (unheard of, at the time) would suspend from the floss in the patient’s bathroom and when guests would see the humorous doll, they would often want to meet the gifting dentist. Each doll averaged three new patients per year. A lot less expensive than 1-800-DENTIST. Unfortunately, very few dentists could understand or appreciate the beauty of gaining new patients by making gifts to their patients. In 1984, Fred Joyal and I flew to New York at the invitation of the New York Dental Hygienists Association and we sold dolls at the New York Dental Convention
Back in 1982, thanks to my experience at Chuck Blore, upon learning about “800” phone numbers, I obtained the phone number, 1-800-336-8478, which spelled 1-800-DENTIST. At the time, it was only available only in Vermont, so I had to set up an office in Vermont, where I had the phone answered (terminated in AT&T talk), while we developed its potential uses.
Around this time, all the dentists that had joined the Dental Registry and had used the name with pride in the phone books, received letters from the California Dental Association threatening them with violating the code of ethics by joining an advertising collective that wasn’t owned by a dentist. The courts later ruled that the ADA and its state societies were violating the “Unfair Business Practices Act”. However, at the time, our dentists were frightened out of their skin and quickly sent us resignation letters. Several years later, DRS, “Dental Referral Services”, ran by a dentist and who later licensed 1-800-DENTIST in Florida and Arizona from us, sued the ADA and won.
From 1980 to 1984, I spent time studying the psychology of dentistry and came up with a unique program to educate the public about dentistry. At the time (1978-1985, other than the Dental Registry) the only advertising one would see was the “Come on in for $1.99”, the “We cater to cowards!”, or the “Get high in our chair”, type of ads. We knew we could do better. We had learned that most people were scared of “paying for pain”. At that time over 50% of Americans had never seen a dentist. We aimed to make it “safe”!
At one of the dental conventions where our dolls were being sold by Semantadontics, a representative from the American Dental Association approached me and asked if I would be interested in allowing the ADA to use our 1-800 number. He told me, they were losing 15% of their members each year, made up only by the new dentist grads. My wife and I discussed the idea and thought the phone number might be an easier way for patients to find dentists and at the same time, help put new patients in their dental chairs. We decided to offer it to them for 22 cents per member per month. 22 cents! After four months of deliberation, they told me that was much too much for a phone number. I found these executive decisions bewildering, because they proceeded to spend a great deal more money attempting to make us illegal across the nation. They failed!
Concurrently, I was working with AT&T executives to understand what was happening in the phone industry. No one had ever created an “800” number that spelled out a brand before. But Bell labs was very interested in seeing their dream of "800" phone numbers spelling names come alive, and their technology advanced so we could begin to utilize the same “800” number in different area codes. My wife and I designed a licensing structure which would allow us to license our radio and print ads along with the phone number, our mark and marketing philosophy to different dentists or marketers in each area code across America. We launched in 2005 and had set up the 1-800-DENTIST program in Northern California, Texas, Colorado, Arizona, and Ohio. In 1986 we licensed our program at a reduced cost to my youngest son’s Godfather. He started marketing in the Los Angeles metroplex and his company was called Futuredontics. That might have been the best or worst business deal I ever made.
The business design that my wife and I created allowed us to mandate the proper business use of our intellectual properties. We eventually helped Futuredontics take over our existing licensees and become our exclusive licensee. We allowed our licensee to create adverting (subject to our approval) and pay us millions of dollars for the privilege of working for us. In 1992, they began warring with us and told one of our attorneys that they would keep us in litigation until we cried uncle. They did and we cried uncle ten years later.
As an aside, only two phone numbers ever made it to the big time: 1-800-DENTIST and 1-800-FLOWERS. AT&T brought Jim McCann and I together at one of the resorts they were flying us to and they have a picture of Jim and me: 1-800 FLOWERS meets 1-800-DENTIST.
The relationship with Futuredontics provided the amazing misfortune of learning all about attorneys, and just how human they were. I learned a few things about greed and big money along the way. After being served on many a Christmas Eve with new state or federal law suits (exclusively by Futuredontics), we cried uncle and sold the company for three cents on the dollar to Futuredontics. In April of 2004, as we received the last payment, a new advertising campaign began showing Fred Joyal to be the founder of 1-800-DENTIST. So much for integrity among professionals. Freddie has also accepted countless honors and awards for creating “1-800-DENTIST.” So be it.
Did you really create 1-800-DENTIST?
The unequivocal answer is yes. Freddie Joyal (Signed above as Alfred Joyal) created Futuredontics in 1986 and became the sixth licensee [see above contract] of Applied Anagramics, Inc., the corporation belonging to my wife and myself and the parent company of 1-800-DENTIST. We had one more partner in the beginning named Charles Eberle, who began licensing our dental marketing program (advertisements, philosophical ideas for bringing patients and dentists together) and intellectual properties to people in area codes around the nation. Below is the history of what really happened. My wife and I never desired any publicity and we kept a very private profile so our family would have a normal upbringing. After ten years of litigation from our sixth licensee (Joyal's Futuredontics), we finally had enough. However, we can clearly say that Freddie and Gary paid us millions of dollars over the twenty years we owned 1-800-DENTIST, for the privilege of working for us! The month he finished paying us off in 2004, he became the television founder of 1-800-DENTIST, and has proudly accepted many national awards for "his creation".
History:
In 1970, I wrote a little illustrated book with Ed Munter called "Everybody Needs An Elephant" and this landed me a job at the most prestigious radio advertising firms in the English speaking world, "Chuck Blore Creative Services." We had won so many CLIO's for the major advertising houses around the world, and especially for AT&T, that Ma Bell gave Chuck and his daughter, Cathy, their own exclusive phone numbers that spelled out their names. I had no idea such a thing was possible, but twelve years later, when I found out about 800 numbers, I obtained 1-800-336-8478 (DENTIST).
In 1980, my three-year-old began to experience the blackening of his teeth (never having candy or soda pop), so I called the Santa Barbara dental society and asked where I could take my son to have his teeth looked at. The society told me there were only two pedodontists in Santa Barbara and we went to the one who they recommended the highest.
Following their recommendation, my wife took my son to the dentist’s office and after six minutes of our son being in the examining room, my wife heard HIM screaming. She ran into the room only to find my son’s hands tied to the chair as the dentist was probing his mouth. My wife took my son out of the highly recommended dentist and we went to the other pedodontist. Federico Grosso’s office was quite pleasant and we experienced a wonderfully talented and dedicated dentist. Luckily, my son overcame that initial trauma caused by the first dentist and his neo-natal enamel hypoplasia was treated successfully. Incidentally, it was caused by my son drinking apple juice from his bottle. Ooops!
The experience my family had with the dental society led to my wife and I creating a company called The Dental Registry. I hired two artists from UCSB and a photographer in Santa Barbara and created a series of humorous and educational print ads. While investigating marketing models, we researched one of the fastest growing business models in the country: Multi-level-marketing. Much to our amazement, we found that in the most successful MLM of the time, Amway, the largest professional group involved were dentists.
One of my friends from our successful real estate days, David Dodart, was becoming a multi-millionaire with his new MLM corporations, Source, and World-Wide Products. David was grossing over eight million dollars a month with his “MLM’s”, and he took an interest in my dental proposal. We used his model but chose not to have an “endless” line of profits from selling memberships. Rather, I designed a program that would allow members to bring in only two levels of dentists with a ceiling of 5,000 dentists, nationwide. Once we were at the 5,000 membership ceiling, the advertising dollars would be so strong that the last dentists to join would benefit greatly from the new patient growth of their practices.
David taught my assistant, Freddie Joyal, and me how to put on a show from proper lighting to guest speakers and we began to have opportunity meetings around Southern California. Dentists were inviting dentists and soon we were growing. We put in comedic print ads in such magazines as Time, Newsweek, and Sports Illustrated. In 1981, I designed a “family” of soft-sculptured tooth dolls around a foot tall each to be used by dentists to reduce anxiety in their patients. Each doll was designed to be placed in the operatory with built in dental floss, and hang from the ceiling so patients could focus on them. Later, I designed a give-away program for dentists that thanked the patients who made referrals. Each doll, being such an amazing gift from a dentist (unheard of, at the time) would suspend from the floss in the patient’s bathroom and when guests would see the humorous doll, they would often want to meet the gifting dentist. Each doll averaged three new patients per year. A lot less expensive than 1-800-DENTIST. Unfortunately, very few dentists could understand or appreciate the beauty of gaining new patients by making gifts to their patients. In 1984, Fred Joyal and I flew to New York at the invitation of the New York Dental Hygienists Association and we sold dolls at the New York Dental Convention
Back in 1982, thanks to my experience at Chuck Blore, upon learning about “800” phone numbers, I obtained the phone number, 1-800-336-8478, which spelled 1-800-DENTIST. At the time, it was only available only in Vermont, so I had to set up an office in Vermont, where I had the phone answered (terminated in AT&T talk), while we developed its potential uses.
Around this time, all the dentists that had joined the Dental Registry and had used the name with pride in the phone books, received letters from the California Dental Association threatening them with violating the code of ethics by joining an advertising collective that wasn’t owned by a dentist. The courts later ruled that the ADA and its state societies were violating the “Unfair Business Practices Act”. However, at the time, our dentists were frightened out of their skin and quickly sent us resignation letters. Several years later, DRS, “Dental Referral Services”, ran by a dentist and who later licensed 1-800-DENTIST in Florida and Arizona from us, sued the ADA and won.
From 1980 to 1984, I spent time studying the psychology of dentistry and came up with a unique program to educate the public about dentistry. At the time (1978-1985, other than the Dental Registry) the only advertising one would see was the “Come on in for $1.99”, the “We cater to cowards!”, or the “Get high in our chair”, type of ads. We knew we could do better. We had learned that most people were scared of “paying for pain”. At that time over 50% of Americans had never seen a dentist. We aimed to make it “safe”!
At one of the dental conventions where our dolls were being sold by Semantadontics, a representative from the American Dental Association approached me and asked if I would be interested in allowing the ADA to use our 1-800 number. He told me, they were losing 15% of their members each year, made up only by the new dentist grads. My wife and I discussed the idea and thought the phone number might be an easier way for patients to find dentists and at the same time, help put new patients in their dental chairs. We decided to offer it to them for 22 cents per member per month. 22 cents! After four months of deliberation, they told me that was much too much for a phone number. I found these executive decisions bewildering, because they proceeded to spend a great deal more money attempting to make us illegal across the nation. They failed!
Concurrently, I was working with AT&T executives to understand what was happening in the phone industry. No one had ever created an “800” number that spelled out a brand before. But Bell labs was very interested in seeing their dream of "800" phone numbers spelling names come alive, and their technology advanced so we could begin to utilize the same “800” number in different area codes. My wife and I designed a licensing structure which would allow us to license our radio and print ads along with the phone number, our mark and marketing philosophy to different dentists or marketers in each area code across America. We launched in 2005 and had set up the 1-800-DENTIST program in Northern California, Texas, Colorado, Arizona, and Ohio. In 1986 we licensed our program at a reduced cost to my youngest son’s Godfather. He started marketing in the Los Angeles metroplex and his company was called Futuredontics. That might have been the best or worst business deal I ever made.
The business design that my wife and I created allowed us to mandate the proper business use of our intellectual properties. We eventually helped Futuredontics take over our existing licensees and become our exclusive licensee. We allowed our licensee to create adverting (subject to our approval) and pay us millions of dollars for the privilege of working for us. In 1992, they began warring with us and told one of our attorneys that they would keep us in litigation until we cried uncle. They did and we cried uncle ten years later.
As an aside, only two phone numbers ever made it to the big time: 1-800-DENTIST and 1-800-FLOWERS. AT&T brought Jim McCann and I together at one of the resorts they were flying us to and they have a picture of Jim and me: 1-800 FLOWERS meets 1-800-DENTIST.
The relationship with Futuredontics provided the amazing misfortune of learning all about attorneys, and just how human they were. I learned a few things about greed and big money along the way. After being served on many a Christmas Eve with new state or federal law suits (exclusively by Futuredontics), we cried uncle and sold the company for three cents on the dollar to Futuredontics. In April of 2004, as we received the last payment, a new advertising campaign began showing Fred Joyal to be the founder of 1-800-DENTIST. So much for integrity among professionals. Freddie has also accepted countless honors and awards for creating “1-800-DENTIST.” So be it.