DOMINO'SPizza is the latest company to turn to the nascent technique of phone namemarketing as a means of getting its brand and telephone number to the top ofconsumer's minds.

Inthe next few weeks the pizza chain will conduct a trial of the number 1300Dominos, following in the footsteps of Westpac, Hayman Island resorts andQantas Holidays, according to Phone Name Marketing founder Jack Singleton.

Themove follows Roy Morgan research on awareness of phone names compared toconventional telephone numbers. It found that unaided recall of 1300 Westpac,for example, was 13.2 per cent nationally and as high as 30 per cent inQueensland, where the number got a larger media burst last year. The figurescompare favourably to conventional phone number recall, such as the FederalGovernment's national terrorist hotline which registered unprompted awarenessof just 0.3 per cent despite a $30 million ad campaign promoting it.

Armedwith such research results, Mr Singleton, the son of renowned adman John, isgoing on the offensive.

"Thisvalidates what we have been saying for years now," Mr Singleton said."We can really get out there and knock on some doors."

Westpacwas more guarded in its endorsement. "We are evaluating the trial and wehave yet to make a decision to extend it to the rest of the network,"Westpac spokesman David Lording said.

Butthe company that scored the highest awareness in the Morgan research was onethat does not have a phone name, Pizza Hut, which scored 16.7 per cent. InSydney, where the number 9481 1111 has been promoted for years, awareness wasas high as 20 per cent while in Queensland, which has a different number, itwas 9 per cent.

"That'sa pretty good number, if you are paying $15 million a year in ads," MrSingleton said, referring to the higher figure. "My gut feeling is that itwould be 60 per cent in a year if it had a phone name. Domino's has threenumbers to run, that's three versions of the TV ad to cut."

Domino'sscored a respectable 7.3 per cent in the survey and Mr Singleton is promisingthem an equally spectacular leap in awareness after the trial. "If theydon't I'll give them their money back."

MrSingleton first came across the idea of phone name marketing in New York in themid 1990s. After intense lobbying he convinced the authorities to switch fromreleasing the numbers in sequential batches to releasing them all at one time.He has since bought up about 2000 phone names for $2 million.