It was 1996 when I started working at the Cricklewood head office of Peoples Phone [writes Mark Bridge], initially in a sales support role before becoming part of the Marketing team. The company was an independent mobile phone retailer with a growing network of high-street shops and connected customers. In November 1996 the company and its customer base were acquired by Vodafone, which had already taken over the Talkland retail business and was soon to add Astec to its portfolio.
In July 1997, Vodafone restructured its UK operations. The disparate wholly-owned high-street shops were all rebranded as ‘Vodafone’ and managed by the Vodafone Retail business unit. Independent dealers, distributors and third-party retailers who wanted to connect their customers to Vodafone’s network were looked after by Vodafone Connect, while large business customers were dealt with directly by Vodafone Corporate. A new ‘speech mark’ Vodafone logo to be used across the business worldwide was later created by Gary Broadbent with design consultancy Springpoint.
I was invited to join Vodafone Connect after the takeover in 1997. It was in that company’s Croydon office where I first met James Rosewell (then in the I.T. department) and Iain Graham (managing Dealer Sales), who were later to join me on TheFonecast.com’s weekly podcast. It was also here I first came in contact with the London Car Telephones brand, where James Rosewell had previously worked. In total, almost 500 of us were based in Croydon by December 1997 as part of the new Vodafone Connect business.
Where had London Car Telephones come from? Vodafone Connect was formed by merging two separate Vodafone service providers: Vodac and Vodacom. Vodac could trace its history back to the origins of Racal-Vodafone in the 1980s, while Vodacom had previously been called HL Communications (Hawthorn Leslie) before Vodafone bought it in April 1993 and renamed it VHL as an interim step. It was the HL/VHL/Vodacom side of the organisation that had been responsible for building the London Car Telephones brand, which was used by both franchised and independent cellphone dealers across the south of England.
Marketing for London Car Telephones used the same font as Vodafone. The brand name appeared in capital letters using a variant of the Crillee font, coloured red with a thin line running through the centre of the letters. The background colour was generally blue. ‘Car telephones’ had previously been the most-used format of cellular phones: this was a mobile phone permanently mounted in a vehicle to be used by the driver or their passengers, so the company name was literally an obvious choice.
In 1997, there was even a ‘London Car Telephones Handicap’ horse race at Epsom Downs. James Rosewell was intrigued by the company’s bold marketing moves. “One of my first impressions was the innovative radio marketing using ‘London Car Telephones’ instead of ‘hanging on the telephone’ in the Blondie song of the same name”, he tells me. That originality existed in the back-office technology as well. “We were incredibly innovative in engineering, using a low cost and low bandwidth X25 Paknet terminal for in store dealer services. You could literally sell a contract anywhere!”
By the mid-1990s, the idea of a permanent car telephone (‘carphone’) was being superseded by handheld cellular phones. These could, if necessary, be mounted in a handsfree car kit for in-vehicle use but could also be carried in a pocket, bag or on a belt clip. Car Telephones were no longer cutting-edge… and any mention of London could sound restrictive. If Vodafone wanted to sell new technology to new customers, it was time to bring its dealers up to date.
Introducing a new connection system for those dealers wasn’t always easy, as James explained. “Moving to ISDN and IP following the Vodafone integration cost a fortune. Dealers and sales colleagues were not happy. Every time the cursor flashed, the ISDN network ran up cost!”
Updating the high-street branding was another major project. Within a few months of joining Vodafone Connect’s marketing team I was drafting letters to customers who’d connected via independent London Car Telephones shops, telling them “There’s a new name on the high street - with the same familiar faces. Your local London Car Telephones dealer is being rebranded as MPC - the Mobile Phone Centre.”
Vodafone had effectively taken over the Essex-based MPC Mobile Phone Centre business in 1996. Keeping a separate brand for dealers offered more consumer choice; potentially two bites of the cherry for Vodafone. It also provided a new home for the independent Vodafone Centre dealer scheme as well as replacing London Car Telephones stores.
My direct marketing letters – sent in 1998, I think – went on to say “MPC is committed to being the UK’s best, fastest growing mobile phone retailer, offering you great local service and impartial advice with the backing of a national name.” It aimed to maintain a relationship with customers who’d bought a phone from the LCT dealers in Camberley, Crayford, Dorking, Egham, Hadleigh, Reigate and Southgate, making it clear the shop’s branding was being updated but the same staff were remaining at the dealership.
The London Car Telephones limited company was dissolved at Vodafone’s request in 2011. However, whilst LCT Ltd had lived on into the 21st century, it had effectively stopped trading in a meaningful way as a standalone business during the 1993-94 financial year. It was a long reign for a tech innovator originally born as London Message Handling when it was created in the pre-cellphone 1970s.
As for the London Car Telephones brand, this was finally retired in 1998, replaced by MPC branding. Over 90 shops were trading across the UK as MPC Mobile Phone Centres that year. The Blondie radio advertising was gone, although its musical spirit remained. Vodafone Connect supported MPC dealers by creating new radio and TV ads featuring the voice of Holly Aird, with a reworded cover version of the Jackson 5 song ‘ABC’ singing “MPC, easy as can be”.
And, easy as can be, London Car Telephones disappeared from the high street.