WhatsApp and Verizon Are Listening Closely to Underserved Consumers

Amid a tough global economic outlook, 62% of people believe the best companies succeed in making their lives easier, according to Wunderman Thomson.

With connectivity at their core, Verizon and WhatsApp are trying to do just that, developing products and campaigns to serve global communities and cultivating their brands in the process.

Speaking at Brandweek in Miami, Cheryl Gresham, chief marketing officer at Verizon Value, and WhatsApp global head of marketing Vivian Odior sat down with Adweek community editor Luz Corona to discuss how they’re cultivating meaningful connections with consumers and democratizing access to their services.

Going ‘all in’ for consumers

Since joining Verizon from TikTok in 2021, Gresham’s role has evolved to spearhead the telco’s newly formed Verizon Value organization, which debuted in 2022 to better serve the 23 million U.S. subscribers in the value market.

This new division encompasses prepaid wireless brand Total By Verizon (formerly Total Wireless, before Verizon acquired TracFone) and affordable phone arm Visible.

To relaunch Total, Gresham and her team debuted a timely activation last month in response to New York’s 15-cent subway and bus fare hike. When the increase was implemented, Verizon handed out 15,000 prepaid transit cards to commuters at random spots across the city.

Gresham said the campaign was carefully researched and designed to help reduce the financial burden of inflation and show how the provider is “all in” for consumers.

“It allowed us to launch the brand with the right intention about who our customer was and the impact we wanted to make for them, as well as the value they could get from us,” she explained.

She continued: “Results-wise it’s been positive from a PR perspective. We also saw a ton of traffic coming to our digital channels, and we noticed more foot traffic flowing into our stores.”

Verizon plans to open several hundred Total By Verizon stores by the end of the year, with several hundred more planned for 2024. As it ventures deeper into the prepaid market, Verizon wants to continue finding unique moments where it can show up for customers.

WhatsApp on connecting at scale

With 2.5 billion customers and counting, WhatsApp’s user base spans demographics and continents. That drives the marketing team to seek out ways to showcase its merit within different communities and lift its brand to new cultural heights.

One project Odior recently drove that aimed to do both was the expansion of WhatsApp Payments, which allows money to be transferred directly between bank accounts in-app, to Brazil and India. The new functionality opened more economic opportunities for around 200 million people, she said.

She said parent company Meta looked beyond the U.S. and other Western markets, listening to users in emerging economies and responding to their requests.

“We think about every kind of user as we build, but we need to make sure that the users who have the least opportunity can function [easily] within WhatsApp,” she said, crediting tech like voice messages and its newly launched one-to-many broadcast service, Channels, with helping engage people across the world.

Connecting at scale with a global audience is high on Odior’s agenda, and she has built a diverse team with what she called a “multi-identity” understanding of themselves.

“We can’t just run multimillion-pound campaigns in every country that we’re in,” she said. “We wanted to find clusters of people around the world who looked different, sounded different or have a different outlook, and we found it within our marketing ward.”

This cultural crossover approach has led to creative output that better reflects WhatsApp’s role in people’s lives, ultimately resulting in “Horse With Hasan” from New York agency Translation.

The short film featured NBA player and WhatsApp brand partner Giannis Antetokounmpo along with comedian Hasan Minhaj, exploring the complexities of linguistic and cultural diversity.

“[Our team] don’t just bring diversity to the presence of room, but to the work itself,” Odior concluded.