Bschneider
12-06-2005, 09:50 AM
Can You See Me Now?
By RICHARD MULLINS rmullins@tampatrib.com (rmullins@tampatrib.com)
Published: Dec 6, 2005
http://www.tampatrib.com/Business/MGBUE7CNVGE.html
TAMPA - The Verizon logo, it may seem, is everywhere these days in the Tampa Bay area.
The reason: After more than a year of digging trenches for new fiber-optic data lines across roads and front yards, the area's dominant phone company is ratcheting up an already massive, in-person marketing blitz to sell its new high-speed Internet and pay-television services, which include HBO, ESPN and Cartoon Network.
Verizon Communications Inc. employees have been making the rounds of local grade-school soccer fields, ice rinks, Latin music festivals, golf tournaments and neighborhood association meetings to hand out promotional gimmicks such as water bottles, beach balls and video games, all with the Verizon logo prominently displayed. The company is even negotiating to place the Verizon logo on the instruments of high school marching bands.
In Temple Terrace - where Verizon is set to announce today the availability of its new television service - Verizon wants its high-speed Internet brand name, FiOS, to be ubiquitous.
Verizon is sending staff to hang brochures on front doors in Temple Terrace and is deploying FiOS billboard trucks and cutting deals with restaurants and merchants to put the FiOS logo on pizza boxes, dry cleaner bags and takeout coffee cups.
"We're going to be everywhere," Verizon Senior Marketing Manager Anita Gonzalez said while helping set up a FiOS tent at a Christmas tree-lighting festival in downtown Tampa. "We've been to more than 400 events this year. Sometimes we drive the FiOS Hummer right out on the soccer field, take a team's picture holding the FiOS banner. They love it."
Almost no event is too small for Verizon to visit with a marketing team.
That's because Verizon may be an international company with more than $70 billion in annual sales, but it can only sell new cable-like television service in cities and towns where local government officials have awarded Verizon franchise licenses.
"We have to do this on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis, and that means taking a different marketing approach," said Teresa Ward, director of southeast regional marketing for Verizon.
So far, Temple Terrace - which has about 22,000 residents in 6.9 square miles on the northeast end of Tampa - is the only Florida municipality that has granted Verizon a license to sell pay TV service. Tampa and Hillsborough County may grant permission in the months ahead.
Until then, Verizon executives say there would be little use in carpeting the Tampa Bay area with television, radio and print advertisements touting their new pay TV service. If residents in Plant City, Riverview or St. Petersburg called Verizon asking for the new TV service, Verizon would have to turn down the sale, thus upsetting a potential future customer.
Ward declined to say how much Verizon is spending on in-person marketing, but she said it can cost less than a large television advertising campaign.
In a Texas market where Verizon is launching FiOS TV, Verizon employees persuaded a local ice cream shop to sell a FiOS flavor. "It was a good sherbet, very colorful," Ward said. The shop did it for free.
The stakes are enormous for Verizon.
More competitors are entering Florida's market for telephone service, and about 6 percent of Florida residents have "cut the cord" and dropped their home phone lines in favor of cellular phones, according to Florida utility regulators.
To leapfrog this problem, Verizon is spending several billion dollars to build new high-speed fiber-optic data lines directly into homes across the country to support combined phone, Internet and television service.
Such high-speed connections would allow Verizon to package faster Internet connections, thousands of television and pay-per-view channels, plus yet-to-be invented services with heavy data requirements.
This also puts Verizon in direct competition with traditional cable TV companies such as Bright House Networks, Cablevision, Comcast and Time Warner.
"We're going to continue to do what we do best," said Dan Ballister, spokesman for Bright House. "Our focus will be to keep customers happy and provide great products and services they want that make their lives easier."
Verizon's local, in-person campaign strategy is winning praise from so-called "guerilla" marketers who specialize in aggressive advertising campaigns.
"This puts the ads in places where you have people's undivided attention - you're all sitting around eating dinner, and someone notices the ad on the pizza box and starts talking about it," said Mark Hughes, owner of Buzzmarketing in Swarthmore, Pa.
Verizon Communications Inc. is expected to announce today the availability of its pay television service in Temple Terrace. The new service will compete with Bright House Networks and satellite TV companies. Verizon hopes to offer the TV service in other Tampa Bay areas in the months ahead. Verizon has set these prices for services:
* $39.95 for a package that includes local broadcast channels such ABC, CBS, NBC, and FOX, 180 digital channels, such as ESPN, TNT, and CNN, 47 music channels and 20 high definition channels.
* $34.95 a month if customer subscribes to Verizon telephone service.
For more information, see: www.verizonfios.com (http://www.verizonfios.com/)
SOURCE: VERIZON COMMUNICATIONS INC.
VERIZON PAY TV DEBUTS
Verizon Communications Inc. is expected to announce today the availability of its pay television service in Temple Terrace. The new service will compete with Bright House Networks and satellite TV companies. Verizon hopes to offer the service in other Tampa Bay areas in the months ahead. Verizon has set these prices for services:
•$39.95 for a package that includes local broadcast channels such as ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox; 180 digital channels including ESPN, TNT and CNN; 47 music channels; and 20 high-definition channels.
•$34.95 a month if customer subscribes to Verizon telephone service.
For information, visit www.verizonfios.com (http://www.verizonfios.com/)
By RICHARD MULLINS rmullins@tampatrib.com (rmullins@tampatrib.com)
Published: Dec 6, 2005
http://www.tampatrib.com/Business/MGBUE7CNVGE.html
TAMPA - The Verizon logo, it may seem, is everywhere these days in the Tampa Bay area.
The reason: After more than a year of digging trenches for new fiber-optic data lines across roads and front yards, the area's dominant phone company is ratcheting up an already massive, in-person marketing blitz to sell its new high-speed Internet and pay-television services, which include HBO, ESPN and Cartoon Network.
Verizon Communications Inc. employees have been making the rounds of local grade-school soccer fields, ice rinks, Latin music festivals, golf tournaments and neighborhood association meetings to hand out promotional gimmicks such as water bottles, beach balls and video games, all with the Verizon logo prominently displayed. The company is even negotiating to place the Verizon logo on the instruments of high school marching bands.
In Temple Terrace - where Verizon is set to announce today the availability of its new television service - Verizon wants its high-speed Internet brand name, FiOS, to be ubiquitous.
Verizon is sending staff to hang brochures on front doors in Temple Terrace and is deploying FiOS billboard trucks and cutting deals with restaurants and merchants to put the FiOS logo on pizza boxes, dry cleaner bags and takeout coffee cups.
"We're going to be everywhere," Verizon Senior Marketing Manager Anita Gonzalez said while helping set up a FiOS tent at a Christmas tree-lighting festival in downtown Tampa. "We've been to more than 400 events this year. Sometimes we drive the FiOS Hummer right out on the soccer field, take a team's picture holding the FiOS banner. They love it."
Almost no event is too small for Verizon to visit with a marketing team.
That's because Verizon may be an international company with more than $70 billion in annual sales, but it can only sell new cable-like television service in cities and towns where local government officials have awarded Verizon franchise licenses.
"We have to do this on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis, and that means taking a different marketing approach," said Teresa Ward, director of southeast regional marketing for Verizon.
So far, Temple Terrace - which has about 22,000 residents in 6.9 square miles on the northeast end of Tampa - is the only Florida municipality that has granted Verizon a license to sell pay TV service. Tampa and Hillsborough County may grant permission in the months ahead.
Until then, Verizon executives say there would be little use in carpeting the Tampa Bay area with television, radio and print advertisements touting their new pay TV service. If residents in Plant City, Riverview or St. Petersburg called Verizon asking for the new TV service, Verizon would have to turn down the sale, thus upsetting a potential future customer.
Ward declined to say how much Verizon is spending on in-person marketing, but she said it can cost less than a large television advertising campaign.
In a Texas market where Verizon is launching FiOS TV, Verizon employees persuaded a local ice cream shop to sell a FiOS flavor. "It was a good sherbet, very colorful," Ward said. The shop did it for free.
The stakes are enormous for Verizon.
More competitors are entering Florida's market for telephone service, and about 6 percent of Florida residents have "cut the cord" and dropped their home phone lines in favor of cellular phones, according to Florida utility regulators.
To leapfrog this problem, Verizon is spending several billion dollars to build new high-speed fiber-optic data lines directly into homes across the country to support combined phone, Internet and television service.
Such high-speed connections would allow Verizon to package faster Internet connections, thousands of television and pay-per-view channels, plus yet-to-be invented services with heavy data requirements.
This also puts Verizon in direct competition with traditional cable TV companies such as Bright House Networks, Cablevision, Comcast and Time Warner.
"We're going to continue to do what we do best," said Dan Ballister, spokesman for Bright House. "Our focus will be to keep customers happy and provide great products and services they want that make their lives easier."
Verizon's local, in-person campaign strategy is winning praise from so-called "guerilla" marketers who specialize in aggressive advertising campaigns.
"This puts the ads in places where you have people's undivided attention - you're all sitting around eating dinner, and someone notices the ad on the pizza box and starts talking about it," said Mark Hughes, owner of Buzzmarketing in Swarthmore, Pa.
Verizon Communications Inc. is expected to announce today the availability of its pay television service in Temple Terrace. The new service will compete with Bright House Networks and satellite TV companies. Verizon hopes to offer the TV service in other Tampa Bay areas in the months ahead. Verizon has set these prices for services:
* $39.95 for a package that includes local broadcast channels such ABC, CBS, NBC, and FOX, 180 digital channels, such as ESPN, TNT, and CNN, 47 music channels and 20 high definition channels.
* $34.95 a month if customer subscribes to Verizon telephone service.
For more information, see: www.verizonfios.com (http://www.verizonfios.com/)
SOURCE: VERIZON COMMUNICATIONS INC.
VERIZON PAY TV DEBUTS
Verizon Communications Inc. is expected to announce today the availability of its pay television service in Temple Terrace. The new service will compete with Bright House Networks and satellite TV companies. Verizon hopes to offer the service in other Tampa Bay areas in the months ahead. Verizon has set these prices for services:
•$39.95 for a package that includes local broadcast channels such as ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox; 180 digital channels including ESPN, TNT and CNN; 47 music channels; and 20 high-definition channels.
•$34.95 a month if customer subscribes to Verizon telephone service.
For information, visit www.verizonfios.com (http://www.verizonfios.com/)