Verizon Direct Tv

Byline: BETH NEGUS VIVEIROS

WIRELESS PENETRATION is at 63% in the United States and 75% in the Northeast, according to Stacia Goddard, executive vice president and managing director at Hill Holliday/New York.

For her client Verizon Wireless, that means the "land grab" is over. When a wireless carrier gets a new customer now, it's likely stealing that person from another provider.

"It's hard to do," Goddard said at the New England Direct Marketing Association's annual conference recently in Waltham, MA. "It's like saying 'I need to switch you from being a Red Sox fan to a Yankees fan.'"

Making it even harder is the fact that much wireless phone advertising is confusing to consumers, who often can't fathom which offer is best. To illustrate her point, Goddard played a montage of television spots from various carriers. The offers - with price points ranging from 99 cents to $199 - came fast and furious.

Verizon Wireless spends more than any other single brand that advertises in the United States, close to $1 billion a year, she said.

Indeed, the sheer volume of advertising Verizon Wireless has done is a bit staggering, according to the statistics Goddard shared: 47,079 print ads, 258 freestanding inserts, 534 radio ads, 114 custom TV spots, 338 unique mail pieces (and 7,372 custom variations on those pieces), 102 banners and countless e-mail campaigns.

For Verizon Wireless, every communication is about generating response. The company lives and dies not by simple leads, but by sales every day.

The company's marketing approach is to look closely at what the most effective medium is in each market. While newspaper ads might be heavy in the Northeast, in Los Angeles - where everyone is seemingly in the car all the time - billboards are more important.

In the wireless phone world, consumers want to know the big numbers, such as how many minutes are in the plan, the price and the features of the phone offered. Verizon Wireless saw that stressing the reliability of its network was a way to differentiate itself.

This led to the well-known "Can you hear me now?" campaign, which included regional taglines such as "Works in all 4 NYC tunnels." Creative across different media and regions is integrated but not identical, an approach Goddard described as "unity, not uniformity."

When judging return on investment, the carrier looks at spending and the conversion rate, as well as the cost of each medium, she said.

Cingular's purchase of AT&T Wireless presented a challenge to Verizon: Since Verizon Wireless was no longer the largest cellular carrier, it knew Cingular wouldn't hesitate to promote itself as the widest network.

As a result, Verizon Wireless decided it had to publicize its network as well as the whole Verizon experience. And the approach is working. Churn is less than 1%, and in its major market Verizon Wireless is above 30% penetration. Moreover, direct marketing communications are generating a 10% to 25% lift in response.

COPYRIGHT 2005 PRIMEDIA Business Magazines & Media Inc. All rights reserved.
COPYRIGHT 2005 Gale Group

Develop Through Targeted Training - Sponsored Link
Ad - Download a white paper about creating effective training development programs.