(FORTUNE Magazine) – Below the Big Three long-distance phone carriers -- AT&T, MCI, and Sprint -- some 400 smaller companies fight over the remaining scraps of the market. Most are doomed, and competition for survival has produced innovative marketing strategies. Among the most successful: Tug heartstrings. Tele-Sav, a Springfield, Illinois, long-distance company, borrowed an idea from its slogan, ''Take Charge of Your Long Distance,'' to create a Take Charge award for people who have regained self-control under trying circumstances. One winner: a priest who battled back from psychosis to become a founder of a self-help group for the mentally ill. Of the cities in which the award was promoted, Decatur most recently picked long-distance carriers. Tele-Sav's reward was 24% of the vote. Stay local. If you are small and hometown, play it up. Kenneth Bice, president of a little Alabama long-distance company named TelNet, recalls, ''When MCI came to Anniston, they took out full-page ads. We couldn't match them, but you know it actually helped our business. People who had been on the fence would call up and say, 'Ken, I guess I'm ready to sign up now.' When they had dialed that 800 number and somebody with a New Jersey accent answered, it was all over.'' Bice stresses the local angle. He says 37% of Anniston's business callers picked TelNet as their carrier. Sell more than price. An admiring businessman says of Cedar Rapids-based Teleconnect Co., ''It owns the state of Iowa.'' In a sense it does, having won the state capitol complex's long-distance business away from AT&T. Teleconnect charges less than its giant competitor, but unlike other tiny carriers offers some of the same premium services, such as conference calling and its own operators. The company also resells the services of its 350 over-the-phone salesmen to such corporate clients as Gillette and to the fund-raising departments of 70 colleges. Revenues, still modest at $72 million in 1985, were up 60% over the previous year. Dare to be silly. Knowing it was outgunned in Texas, Florida, and New York by competitors with bigger ad budgets, Metromedia Long Distance Inc. dressed comedian Martin Mull in a foam rubber telephone suit, put him in front of a camera, and told him to act natural. At least in the Southwest, the TV commercials featuring Mull's character, Mr. Telephone, have so impressed audiences that his tag line, ''Whoa-ho, Mr. Telephone!'' has surpassed ''Where's the Beef?'' as Texans' exclamation of choice. Metromedia now pulls up to 19% of the vote in some markets.