2006 Grand Ex Wednesday, June 14, 2006 To launch a high-speed internet service, Verizon Communications and Pierce Promotions & Event Management used every event discipline in the book. In an age of integration comes an event marketing campaign that delivered on all cylinders, an integrated, experiential program that pulled every lever, in every place, in every way to connect a brand with its target audience. As Elaina Mango tells it, there was no better way to launch FiOS than with a totally integrated, locally customized, highly experiential event-based campaign. Verizon Communications’ director of regional marketing points out that the essence of the FiOS service, a high-tech offering being rolled out town by town, made it a natural fit for an event campaign. To introduce consumers to its fiber-optic Internet service, then get them to sign up, Verizon spent a good deal of 2005 executing events—more than 1,000 of them in all—in 120 markets. Almost all of them were customized for a specific geography; there were no cookie-cutter solutions. Nearly every form of live marketing was incorporated, including mobile marketing, entertainment sponsorship, concerts, proprietary events, street teams, buzz initiatives, and pop-up stores. Even more impressive, the company found strategic ways to use events to leverage other events. No stone was left unturned in a bid to supercharge trial and acquisition. And it all worked the way live marketing should, which is why Verizon’s FiOS launch—via Portland, ME-based Pierce Promotions & Event Management—took home the 2006 Grand Ex Award as the best experiential marketing program of the year. Here’s how a high-speed Internet launch has become a case study for what experiential marketing is all about. 1. First, there was the need to embrace events as a lead medium in the marketing attack. Says Mango: “To sell high-speed Internet service, we knew the customer had to be able to touch it, experience it, and feel it in a great, cool environment that they wanted to be a part of.” As a result, the brand called on almost every consumer event marketing tactic in the book. There were pop-up stores, called FiOS Lounges, each open for three to four months and filled with demos, interactives, and room for visitors to chill. There were concert sponsorships—Avril Lavigne with the Backstreet Boys at Jones Beach, NY, for example. Proprietary Grammy Award viewing parties in Huntington Beach, CA. Tie-ins with videogame competitions in Winchester, MA. Grassroots initiatives that sent field teams in branded Hummers to events in 60 markets. An in-school initiative, giving students the chance to design electronic art using Verizon content. There were retail components, with guerrilla teams activating inside big-box chains and independents. And promotional partnerships with local businesses. 2. Then, there was the need to tailor activation locally. FiOS was being introduced town by town, so Verizon needed to avoid marketing to consumers living in neighborhoods that weren’t already wired for the service. Using TV, radio, and print would have generated millions of wasted impressions. “The incredibly targeted nature of the product—where it was available and when—meant we could only communicate to consumers in that particular market,” says Bob Martin, president of Pierce. “So we had to be incredibly targeted in how we spoke to consumers in each market. Whether it was Falls Church, VA, or Wylie, TX, we had to be able to talk to those folks individually.” More than that, the brand wanted to use the campaign to establish itself as part of the community for the long haul, not just a corporation swooping in to sell something. “We wanted to position Verizon as more of a neighbor than a visitor,” Martin says. “It couldn’t be an aggressive sell and we had to be accepted by each of those communities. So the marketing had to make sense within the idiosyncrasies of each community.” One example: Verizon struck a deal with Dimondas Bakery, which was next door to the FiOS Lounge in Massapequa, NY, to provide free Italian ice to Verizon’s pop-up. Another: To promote a Grammy Awards party in Huntington Beach, Verizon reps literally went house to house, distributing 4,000 door hangers with event info. The invites included blank CDs that guests could bring to the party, where they could download three free tunes. Participants also were entered for a chance to leave the event to attend the actual awards ceremony that night in L.A. 3. Verizon knew its initiatives in each market would have to be more than just one-offs. “We wanted the events to be extremely memorable so that you didn’t have an event that just stopped,” Mango says. “There had to be follow-through with the customer.” So Verizon layered event marketing on top of event marketing to keep the conversation going. Consider the sponsorship of the concert by Lavigne and the Backstreet Boys. The company installed FiOS Lounges months before the show was to take place—using the pop-ups as a local home base. Buzz marketing initiatives seeded the market, with mobile vehicles, street teams, and promotional fliers getting the word out. Customers were directed to the lounges to demo the service and pick up free tickets to the concert. The lounges hosted events of their own—Avril Lavigne karaoke contests, for example. And post-event, concertgoers could return to the shops to redeem their ticket stubs for additional rewards. Clint Pierce, the agency’s ceo, says quality execution was important not only for the consumer experience, but because Verizon also was making an impression with local government and business leaders. “They’re focused on working with the municipalities, so they needed to create good business-to-business relationships in each market as well.” 4. From the start, the company was focused on results. Data collection was the fuel this campaign burned on, and trial was the ultimate objective. “That was one of the criteria for us, from the day we issued the RFP,” Mango says. “These programs had to drive incremental sales, whether in a sales lift or direct sales—and we wanted both.” Sales figures were measured every step of the way, as Mango puts it, “pre-buzz, during buzz, during the event, post-event, and post-post-event.” Not surprisingly, Verizon started to realize that the more integrated its events became, the higher sales figures spiked. And they spiked consistently. In the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, and West regions, where FiOS event marketing was in place, sales lifts ranged between eight percent and 30 percent at their peaks, Mango says. Full Steam Ahead Once the program was ready for launch, it was clear that Verizon’s corporate leadership was behind the initiative. But to make it all happen, company execs needed to adjust their marketing mindset. “It took a lot of justification because like other companies, Verizon tended to really think about local marketing as just an awareness vehicle,” Mango says. “But we knew we had to be diligent about changing our style of marketing. We knew we had to become much more hip and reach a different segment of consumers. So right on up to our top executives, we realized we had to change; we had to market differently.” In the end, the campaign made 500,000 one-to-one interactions, generated 10 million impressions, and helped generate hundreds of thousands of new subscribers in a campaign that hit on all cylinders. It was totally local, with elements fine-tuned by ZIP code. It was completely national, with the events tied into umbrella promotions. It was on site at events and on target in each and every neighborhood. It connected with consumers and was directly responsible for turning them into customers. And, with continuous, strategic, and integrated experiences at its core, it perfectly represented the continuing evolution of event marketing and earned its place as the best campaign of the year.