Phone Service Review: How Verizon Beats Competition with 3 Ad Campaigns

If you think about the last phone commercial you saw, it was probably a Verizon ad. They know that coverage is the biggest deciding factor. Their catchy "can you hear me now" commercials are everywhere, and supposedly so is their service. I was selling pest control in California when that first commercial was cast-another salesman on our team nearly got the role. The funny thing is, my T-mobile service, at that time was much better received in Canyon Country and other hilly valleys of California than his Verizon was able to pick up signals. Yet, Verizon does better in a wider array of locations. Verizon and T-mobile are about equal in different areas of coverage here in Utah. But give the edge to Verizon for image, due to their advertising.

All the phone services have similar gimmicks that frustrate attempts to buy out and switch providers: contracts, free phone offers, and etc. But Verizon builds on the coverage motif and struck it rich with another selling point in their ad campaigns. Verizon's "friends and family" racket brings in the phone plans through groups of people. Here is where families decide that, as a group that mainly calls each other, Verizon becomes the best option. More people have Verizon anyway throughout the nation. Other phone companies, such as T-mobile, have this feature to-though it is also not marketed as well-but its main issue goes back to coverage, being more in localized pockets. Phones cover great distances between family and/or friends and since Verizon can boast coverage in most areas, even families in more remote areas-where another service may have more towers and more bars-resort to Verizon knowing that more of their contacts are likely to have Verizon. The "more bars" campaign is losing out.

The last ad campaign employed by Verizon is "the network." Other companies surely don't leave you stranded without any access to help, but Verizon emphasizes it. If you go into a Verizon store they will reconfigure your phone, transfer numbers, or help in anyway they can. T-mobile is helpful too, for example, but not so hands on. Their biggest fix is drying out phones that have fallen into the toilet, which you are basically out of luck when that happens anyway. Whereas Verizon makes it standard practice to do for its customers what they could do on their own in a multiplicity of instances.