Verizon – Discovering New Countries.
When searching for stuff to write my next marketing blog about, I stumbled across this strange photo in The Consumerist. 220 Countries… Last I knew, there are less then 200 countries. So I decided to do my research… The UN only recognizes 192 countries while the US State Department only recognizes 194 countries. Obviously there was some miscounting. Where are these other 26 countries – maybe Verizon has secret locations ideal for a secluded vacation?
After realizing that, even as a Verizon customer, it made me think about other marketing ploys that use numbers to make their service look more appealing. Living on my own now in an apartment, I have utilized the cable jack in my living room and am currently a Shaw customer. Besides being greatly disappointed with Canadian cable, I remember hearing that Shaw offers a large number of basic cable channel. How come every time I change the channel the message of “Unavailable” comes up saying that I do not have service for those channels. So after getting up to about the high 900’s I realized that 50% of my marked channels by Shaw were music channels… Awesome Shaw, shame on me.
Seeing this advertisement and through my own experiences, especially with Shaw, I have come to the realization that numbers in marketing strategies are greatly deceiving.