Reach out and touch someone.

“Reach out and touch someone” is best known not as an anonymous proverb but as an advertising slogan from AT&T in the United States. It emerged in the late 1970s as long-distance calling became a mass consumer service and telecom companies marketed the emotional value of staying connected across distance. The line was used in AT&T television and print campaigns (often paired with sentimental vignettes of families and friends), and it quickly entered everyday speech as a shorthand for making contact—especially by phone. Because it circulated widely beyond the ads, it is sometimes misattributed to “Anonymous,” but its origin is commercial copywriting.

The phrase compresses a modern paradox: physical separation can be bridged by communication technology. “Reach out” suggests an active, humane impulse to connect; “touch” intensifies that impulse by borrowing the language of bodily intimacy and care. In the advertising context, the slogan reframes a paid service (a phone call) as an emotionally meaningful act, implying that technology can transmit warmth, reassurance, and presence. In broader usage, it functions as a gentle imperative—encouraging people to initiate contact, check in, or repair distance in relationships—while also reflecting how mediated communication can substitute for, or simulate, direct human closeness.

“Reach out and touch somebody.”
“Reach out. Touch someone.”
“Reach out and touch someone today.”