Peak Brooklyn? Cricket Wireless Put Voicemails on Vinyl

There’s a lathe. In a DUMBO record shop. Cutting your grandmother’s voicemail onto 7-inch vinyl while you watch, with sleeve art by a local artist.

It might be the most Brooklyn thing ever. In the best way.

For Cricket Wireless, ARGONAUT from San Francisco took over Vinyl + Thread on October 10 for “Vinyl Voicemails.” New Yorkers brought in the messages they never delete — birthday greetings, “just calling to say hi” calls, the occasional legendary butt dial — and left with them on a record.

A wireless brand with a feelings problem

Wireless is a hard category to love. Plans blur together, coverage maps look alike and connectivity gets filed under utilities, somewhere near the water bill.

The challenge for ARGONAUT was to make Cricket’s promise of connection mean something — to show what all those bars and gigabytes are for. The answer turned out to be the voice on the other end of the line.

From the cloud to the turntable

The mechanics are half the charm. Participants transferred audio straight from their phones into a cutting system run by boutique audio fabrication studio Tangible Formats. A blank disc went onto the lathe, and the recording was etched into the surface in real time while its owner watched and listened.

No factory. No pressing plant. Every record was a true one-off, finished with custom sleeve art by NYC artist Landon Khiry.

That’s the part a commercial can’t fake.

150 records and one grandmother

The pop-up ran through all 150 records. The reactions explain why.

“It just feels really good to know that I’ll have this physical recording of my grandmother’s voice forever,” said one attendee. “I can see myself in the future just like sitting in front of my record player and like running that back over and over and over again.”

Hard to write a better brand line than that. Nobody at the agency had to.

Pointing the analog revival at something personal

Film cameras, paperbacks and turntables are already back. ARGONAUT’s insight, led by a team under chief creative officer Hunter Hindman, was aiming that nostalgia at the most intimate thing on a phone: the sound of someone you love.

“By turning a loved one’s saved voicemail into a real vinyl record, we’re taking our promise of connectivity and making it visible, human and permanent,” says Cindy Rozier, assistant vice president of brand, advertising, marketing and sponsorships at Cricket Wireless.

Built for the neighborhood

The borough was in on it from the start. Cricket warmed things up with two TikTok teasers, including one built around a voicemail from the Green Lady of Brooklyn.

Local creators, along with NYC for Free and Explore NYC Free, spread the word to the people most likely to show up with a voicemail in hand. They did.

It’s a phone company asking you to put the phone down and drop a needle.

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Learn more

ARGONAUT
ARGONAUT LinkedIn
Vinyl Voicemails recap video
TikTok teaser: Green Lady of Brooklyn
TikTok teaser 2
Contact: jeff.sweat@argonautinc.com | 415-633-8200