A vanity number is a local or
toll-free telephone number
A toll-free telephone number or freephone number is a telephone number that is billed for all arriving calls. For the calling party, a call to a toll-free number from a landline is free of charge. A toll-free number is identified by a dialing prefi ...
for which a subscriber requests an easily remembered sequence of numbers for marketing purposes.
While many of these are
phoneword
Phonewords are mnemonic phrases represented as alphanumeric equivalents of a telephone number. In many countries, the digits on the telephone keypad also have letters assigned. By replacing the digits of a telephone number with the correspondin ...
s (such as
1-800-Flowers
1-800-Flowers.com, Inc. is a floral and foods gift retailer and distribution company in the United States. The company's focus, except for Mother's Day and Valentine's Day, is on gift baskets. They also use the name ''1-800-Baskets.com''. Their ...
, 313-DETROIT, 1-800-Taxicab or 1-800-Battery), occasionally all-numeric vanity phone numbers are used.
Numbers ending with repeated digits (such as -1111) are heavily advertised by taxi and food delivery companies; the
Pizza Pizza
Pizza Pizza Ltd. is a franchised Canadian pizza quick-service restaurant with its headquarters in Toronto, Ontario. Its restaurants are mainly in the province of Ontario while others are located in Quebec, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and west ...
chain has trademarked 967-1111, a Toronto local number. A memorable repeated sequence is also valuable to
hotel chain
A hotel is an establishment that provides paid lodging on a short-term basis. Facilities provided inside a hotel room may range from a modest-quality mattress in a small room to large suites with bigger, higher-quality beds, a dresser, a ref ...
franchisors such as
Super 8 Motels, which advertises 1-800-800-8000.
A broadcaster may match a local telephone number to a station frequency (an
AM 1010 radio call-in programme may use 872-1010 or a
TV channel 13 studio may adopt 224-13-13.). An eye clinic may choose a number terminating in
20/20
Visual acuity (VA) commonly refers to the clarity of vision, but technically rates an examinee's ability to recognize small details with precision. Visual acuity is dependent on optical and neural factors, i.e. (1) the sharpness of the retinal ...
.
Yellow page listing for +1 613 549 20/20
, an optician's clinic.
Other possible numeric indicators which convey specific meanings are 24/7
In commerce and industry, 24/7 or 24-7 service (usually pronounced "twenty-four seven") is service that is available at any time and usually, every day. An alternate orthography for the numerical part includes 24×7 (usually pronounced "twenty ...
(twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week) or 2-4-1 (two for the price of one); the latter is used by 241 Pizza
241 Pizza is a Canadian franchise chain of quick-serve pizza restaurants headquartered in the Toronto district of Scarborough, Ontario.
241 Pizza has 62 locations across Ontario, predominantly in Southern Ontario, and has expanded throughout Cana ...
by advertising local number 241-0-241 or a variant.
See also
* Phoneword
Phonewords are mnemonic phrases represented as alphanumeric equivalents of a telephone number. In many countries, the digits on the telephone keypad also have letters assigned. By replacing the digits of a telephone number with the correspondin ...
* SMS/800 and RespOrg In the North American Numbering Plan, a RespOrg (a contraction for responsible organization) is a company that maintains the registration for individual toll-free telephone numbers in the distributed Service Management System/800 database. Their fun ...
and Toll-free telephone number#Vanity numbering
* Vanity domain
In the Domain Name System (DNS), a vanity domain is a domain name whose purpose is to express the individuality of the person on whose behalf it is registered. This contrasts with domain names which resolve to an organisation (e.g. a company) or ...
* Vanity plate
A vanity plate or personalized plate (United States and Canada); prestige plate, private number plate, cherished plate or personalised registration (United Kingdom); personalised plate (Australia, New Zealand, and United Kingdom) or custom pla ...
References
{{marketing-stub
Telephone numbers