Somewhere, there is a person who knows exactly how much it costs to provide somebody with a month’s worth of cell phone service in Canada.The person is obviously not talking, and in fact, may well have had his or her tongue removed by the cell phone companies. But if you were to hazard a guess, I suspect the closer you get to zero, the righter you are likely to be.

Because if you look at what the ads say it’ll cost you, and then you subtract the cost of producing the ads, and running the ads, and renting the cell phone stores the ads list in mousetype, and paying the store staff, and renting the telemarketing centres where the people sit who call you to get you to sign up for cell phone service, there can’t be hardly anything left over. The wireless phone industry may just be the first in history in which the only real cost of the product is the cost of marketing the product.

The phone service business, broadly speaking, appears to be one in which companies you have never done business with, companies nobody you ever met has ever done business with, companies you never heard of before can afford to bust out with full-blown ad campaigns on radio and TV with singing commercials telling you how you can call all over the world and talk forever for roughly nothing. This is one profitable business, kids.

Imagine what an amazing business this would have been for Ma Bell, if we’d only gone on playing it The Canadian Way and let Our Friends have a Monopoly and let everyone else go hew wood and haul water! The widows and orphans who traditionally squirrel away Bell stock would be out pricing BMWs as gifts for their drug dealers, such would be their rapid and obscene rise to first-year-NBA-draft-pick-level wealth.

But noooooo, we let competition raise its ugly, American-influenced head, and as a result only those dreadful advertising people are really coining it.

As evidence, may I direct your attention to one single section of The Toronto Star on a recent nondescript Tuesday. Phone companies accounted for four either full-page or page dominant ads, three of them in colour. Do the math. How many accounts does each ad have to generate just to pay for the space? This is a terrifying number, okay?

And how about that 15% commission? If they are indeed coining it, are the ad people earning their lavish fees and commissions on this? After all, the product is the advertising, right? You be the judge! No, wait, let me be the judge! This is my column!

I will preface my judgmental mode with a prejudicial confession: my Dad worked for Bell for 35 years, with six years leave of absence to go fight the Second World War. This means, obviously, we don’t like Bell all that much. But cripes, Bell is telephones. And unless I have not been paying attention, no other phone company has ever tried to tell me why what they do is better than what Bell does. Or is as good as what Bell does. So I bumble on with Bell, whatever the price.

The Value Equation is price plus quality equals value. And the phone business talks price to distraction, but never quality. This makes me suspicious. Silly, but there it is.

Telus Mobility’s Star ad stays true to their gutsy determination to convince us that bugs and lizards are cuter and more endearing than Fido’s dogs. The head says Finally, wireless that really satisfies you. A lounging lizard which has obviously just ingested something deeply satisfying rubs its scaly little tummy. But the pitch, the offer, is in a little box about one-fiftieth the size of the ad. It offers us 350 anytime minutes for $40 a month, plus plus plus. Remember those numbers for future comparison.

Two pages later, Fido takes a whole half a page just to show us a traffic jam with the head I love Tuesdays. Wait! WHERE ARE THE DOGS? SOMEBODY STOLE THE DOGS! The rest of the ad gives us The Deal: 250 minutes, $25. And free local calls on your favourite day of the week.

Do we have a winner yet? Who would know?

Then Rogers AT&T weighs in with an ad that is mostly some jerk who’s been thrown through a wall by his treadmill. Head please: You shouldn’t guess how to use a treadmill. Why do it with a wireless plan? Haven’t you asked yourself the same question a million times? Well Rogers’ answer is sign up, choose a plan, get three months unlimited local calling, and then they’ll tell you what plan you shoulda chosen. See, you can give the whole plan thing a swerve, and step into the unknown, which Rogers perversely calls the peace of mind of knowing.

Finally, Bell has a full-page, four-colour ad headed The Pursuit of Simplicity.

A little girl runs barefoot across the sand, under a babbling block of copy that tells us Bell is trying to simplify our world. And if you believe this, try having your Bell Mobility cheque arrive late, and see what they put you through, without notice. Believe me, it’s the best ad I’ve ever lived through for anyone but Bell.

Barry Base creates advertising campaigns for a living. He writes this column to promote the cause of what he calls intelligent advertising, and to attract clients who share the notion that many a truth is said in jest. Barry can be reached at (416) 924-5533, or faxed at (416) 960-5255, at the Toronto office of Barry Base & Partners.