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Wieden+Kennedy makes sure-footed debut for Verizon

Back in January US telecoms giant Verizon – the sixth-biggest advertiser in the States with a spend of $2.4bn – appointed Wieden+Kennedy to handle its brand and strategy work. The move (out of Mcgarrybowen) followed the appointment of Diego Scotti as CMO (as such things do).

In the recent past Verizon’s advertising has been viewed as staid, although that doesn’t seem to have hurt its performance. It makes revenues of well over $100bn a year, bought AOL for $4.4bn and bought out Vodafone’s share in the business for the equivalent of the gross domestic product of about half the world.

So what would W+K HQ in Portland, best known for challenging advertising for challenger brands (and Nike) come up with? Recently we think we’ve detected a more conservative approach to some of its bigger clients, like KFC. This is not a view shared at W+K London, we note.

Strategy-wise this seems to take the conservative route of big is best, certainly more reliable. Nothing to aggravate the client there. So here we go: ‘Better Matters.’

If you’ve got the most customers it’s reasonable enough to invite them to feel good about their choice. And not having a reliable phone network is the biggest annoyance with mobiles.

All of which is clearly expressed here, in a nicely understated and mildly humorous way.

“Don’t drop the ball” is the first rule of bedding in a big account.

MAA creative scale: 8.

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