Man bites frog

by Sarah Modlock

8 June 2005

Just when you thought there was nothing more irritating on TV than Celebrity Love Island or Carol Vorderman juggling 'cheap loan' bubbles comes, you've guessed it, the Crazy Frog. Talk about torture by amphibian. The things you see when you don't have your gun. Or a French chef, for that matter.

If you feel like dragging a sharp object across your throat every time it comes on you're not alone. The trouble is that it's on more than it's off right now. In fact it was shown more than 45,000 times in its first three weeks - that's more than 80 times an hour. Which makes us all officially on suicide-watch.

The Sun newspaper even sent a reporter - who they cannot like very much - to play the frog song in public places and see how long it took people to lose their cool. After a tour of about a dozen buildings including Westminster Abbey and the British Library he made his excuses and left. The outcome? A story about Crazy Frog backlash. Not exactly 'man bites frog'.

If the Crazy Frog had been around in medieval times, they wouldn't have needed the Rack. Five minutes of 'bing-deh-bing-bing-bing-bing' would have cracked even the toughest traitor. It can't be long before the British Army employ him for use in interrogation training. But what is scarier still is the amount of success and cash this rancid ranine is generating. At last count, the ringtone had been downloaded 11 million times. At £3 a pop, you do the maths. Unbelievably, this makes the frog a small player in a huge pond - the ringtone industry is worth a staggering £2 billion a year and growing all the time. And guess who is funding it.

Despite millions of customers, I've yet to find anyone who will admit to downloading the frog. Perhaps I have not asked enough teenagers. But far from being a playground phenomenon, Jamster, who are the sadists responsible for spending £3 million on these mind-numbing ads say the average age of a Crazy Frog ringtone purchaser is 25. Hmmm. You know who you are.

Hopping mad

Putting your bad taste - and questionable sanity - aside, the chances are that if you have signed up for the frog, you may end up paying more than you expected. If a gigantic phone bill leaves you bug-eyed at the end of the month, it could be that you have unwittingly joined a premium rate mobile club. Paying your £3 for the frog also signs you up to the Jamster Club and you will be charged £12 a month for further ringtones, wallpaper, videos, pictures and texts sent to your phone - until you un-subscribe.

The Advertising Standards Agency criticised Jamster last month for not making it clear enough in adverts that customers buying the Crazy Frog ringtone were subscribing to the club. And the Independent Committee for the Supervision of Standards of Telephone Information (ICSTIS) is now investigating service providers who run phone lines for Jamster after a deluge of complaints from customers who did not realise they had signed up to receive a weekly bill.

But Jamster says that customers can quickly and easily cancel the package any time over our customer hotline, via SMS, fax, post or through the website. A recorded message on their customer services helpline says: 'If you've ordered one of our products after viewing a TV or print advertisement, it's very likely you've subscribed to one of our clubs... Press two to un-subscribe.' Too late if you have already had a nasty phone bill.

In the words of Robert Swift of Jamster: 'For every complaint or person who finds it annoying, there are thousands of people who love it and as soon as this stops being the case it will stop being on television.'

So far, the only real success the ASA has had against the frog is to get a small black square inserted over his private parts after complaints from worried parents. This is perhaps the only aspect of the Crazy Frog where I cannot see what the problem is. After seeing a picture of him sans black square in the Sunday Telegraph I was quite underwhelmed. But then it wouldn't be the first time.

Frog off

More seriously, firms that flout new ICTIS rules on how ringtones and other mobile extras are sold could be cut off from all UK phone networks if they do not let consumers know exactly what they get for their money and how to turn off the services. At least ten firms were suspended by Vodafone during the first month of the new regime which started on 15th January. They were sent off to clean up the way they operate.

Fierce competition is making it difficult for firms to get new customers, according to Jeremy Flynn at Vodafone. To avoid heavy marketing costs many ringtone and other mobile content sellers started using a new tactic at the end of last year to bump up their profits. This involved signing people up for a monthly subscription instead of just giving them the one ringtone they thought they were buying. 'What made us uncomfortable was that these services were not being marketed transparently,' says Flynn. 'People did not know they were being offered a subscription service.'

If you're still tempted to buy ringtones then check out the new rules so you don't get stung:

•  Customers must be able to switch off service with universal 'stop' command

•  When customers sign up they must be told what they get, how much it costs and for what time period

•  Once a month customers must get a reminder about the subscription and that it costs

•  For every £20 they spend customers must get another reminder about how to turn off the service

•  Print adverts must spell out prices, time periods and details of ring tone offers

And just when you thought it was safe to turn on the TV - or radio - a second Crazy Frog single from a team of DJs calling themselves Pondlife will be out in a fortnight continuing a theme which looks set to try and spoil our summer. Jamster can tell which of its characters are likely to top the charts by monitoring of ringtone sales. Nessie the Tiny Dragon's 'Dragon Love', Brad the Brat's Brat Song and the Tweety Birds are waiting to finish the job the Crazy Frog started. Run - save yourselves. And if you find anyone who admits to buying one of these ringtones, you know just what to do.