Pearl Servat: Putting Transparency at the Center of Visible’s Brand and Growth Marketing
The Disruptor Telecom’s Head of Brand Marketing and Demand Generation speaks with The Continuum about embodying the brand’s “What you see is what you get” mentality.
“You know exactly what you're getting from us—how to sign up, how to interact with the brand, how much you’re paying on a consistent basis, which never changes. A really seamless and clean experience is everything that we stand behind with the brand.”
By E.B. Moss
Visible is the disrupter division of Verizon Wireless—and the brand name says it all. “Transparency” is even the lead value on their website. Pearl Servat, Visible’s Head of Brand Marketing and Demand Generation, can’t hide her enthusiasm for helping to build a brand founded on a purpose and a mission. “Built into our mission [...] is the desire to make the invisible visible, by shining a light on people and communities so they are seen, heard, and empowered.” She is also, as her title transparently indicates, a big believer that brand marketing and demand generation have to walk hand in hand.
Three years ago, Visible was brand new in the world of wireless carriers, and Servat was busy building out the brand’s communications. While she honed her PR chops in the entertainment and brand world under the mentorship of marketing heavy hitters like Pat Kingsley (PMK-BNC), Servat made the switch, as they say in the world of carriers, to helm "brand and demand" marketing. “I sit at the intersection of where I've always loved to be: between brand building, conversion, and growth acquisition,” she explained.
Plus, apropos The Continuum’s perspective, she added, “I've always been steadfast in the philosophy that brand elements, creative messaging, and positioning all have to directly contribute to growth. On a daily basis, we talk about what [the consumer] experience looks like, how to drive emotional depth, and how to build long-lasting connection. It's beyond retaining the customer, because every digital brand under the sun is always talking about how do you create consumer connection...So, we try to create depth and be as intentional as we can at every touchpoint with the brand.”
“It doesn't just start and stop with marketing,” added Servat. “It's all about the way we built the product, our offerings on the back end and the front end, and then how marketing supports all of those elements.”
Pillars of Success
Visible was establishing its brand pillars before the product even came to market. As Servat explained, “We launched a social impact initiative called Visible Connect—an accelerator program that supports non-profit startups who support various impact causes—before we ever launched Visible, the wireless carrier. It was something that our employees and team members had specifically asked for. It was not only about supporting our immediate and extended communities through our owned programs, and these partner programs, but also about entrepreneur-to-entrepreneur learnings, leaning on each other and leveraging each other's platforms, and really walking the walk when it comes to all things impact. It’s something that we're incredibly proud of. But I don't want to put the banner of marketing around it because it's, again, about humanity and the types of people that make up who and what Visible is.”
When it does come to bona fide marketing, transparency translates into simplicity in messaging, and even the look of the site: “You know exactly what you're getting from us—how to sign up, how to interact with the brand, how much you’re paying on a consistent basis, which never changes,” Servat explained. “A really seamless and clean experience is everything that we stand behind with the brand.”
The Visible Difference
As Carl Fremont recently wrote in Ad Age, “every brand still needs a USP: a unique selling proposition.” And Visible certainly has one via its “disruptive” business plan: this new kind of wireless carrier that operates without retail locations, touting customer convenience, community connection, and a low monthly fee. You cannot walk into a Visible store, but you can simply sign up from your couch, as one of its launch campaigns promoted, using experiential marketing to convert bus stops in Los Angeles into living room sets or even mock basketball courts.
“Community” is created as a service to customers who can save money by joining a “Party Pay” plan with others—even people they don’t know. The strategy of no retail locations reduced the company’s costs, making it possible to offer lower prices for customers.
Visible’s marketing campaigns have leveraged multiple tactics to consistently express the brand’s values, and continues to be built around uncompromised transparency. The value-driven approach has proven to not only be the right thing to do, but is also good for business.
“Every digital brand under the sun is always talking about how do you create consumer connection. So we try to create depth and be as intentional as we can at every touch point with the brand.”
Intentionality Meets Intersectionality
“At Visible, we don't BS our customers,” said Servat. “It’s a ‘what you see is what you get service’ [...] and what really resonates with us is the theme of ‘come as you are.’” This concept was manifest in her one-on-one panel conversation at Advertising Week last month, with one of the influencers from their #ProudlyVisible campaign, ALOK, who said, “It's so rare to find brand partnerships where I'm actually able to speak like myself.” Servat added, “We agree with ALOK that the most powerful thing we can do is be honest, and that really resonated with people, especially customers.”
Pearl Servat (r) with #ProudlyVisible spokesperson/influencer, Alok Vaid-Menon (l), at Advertising Week
Visible has tapped the scale of other notable spokespersons/influencers, like Kevin Bacon and Dan Levy. Servat emphasized the importance of partnering with people who live by the same mission as the company. On identifying marquee names, she said: “When it comes to talent partnerships, we do a significant amount of research, and do brand matching of where the overlaps are between our design targets and our prospects, and our targeted consumer base. We only work with talent who also walk the walk when it comes to social impact, what they stand for on an ongoing basis, and how they connect with their own communities.”
On the tactical side, Servat noted that Visible leans heavily into digital. “You want consistency across your whole campaign and all of your channels. They all more or less have to speak the same language.” As a result, Dan Levy was featured across all channels—TV, digital with banners, social and paid. “And then there are other elements of the relationship that we also always tap into,” Servat added, “with cross-channel between his channels and ours, social support, and supporting the media and press as well.” Surprisingly, she added, “You wouldn't think that a company like Visible leans into a traditional tactic,like direct mail, but it performs really well for us.”
Matched with AOR Madwell’s creative, Levy’s “everyperson” appeal and Bacon’s famous “connectedness” (redubbed the “12 degrees of Kevin Bacon”—up from the meme’s six—in homage to the service’s cost-reducing ‘party plan’) both drove significant results.
Servat doesn’t rely on anecdotal feedback to determine results, especially with her equal focus on demand generation and brand building. She explained: “We did pre- and post-analysis for both from an awareness standpoint as well as growth, because, as mentioned, one has to lead to the other. We do brand health studies, and then there are things like site visits and engagement rates and reach. And while we don't love tapping into impressions, that is one of the other measurements that we look at sometimes, depending on the channel. So, for us, it's all about looking at the same set of metrics and measurements to see how they're trending up or the consistencies around them.”
“What we've learned three years in with the brand is that your approach has to be omnichannel. If I am targeting you as a prospect, there has to be that multi-touch approach where you see the brand in five to seven to nine different ways and in different places.”
Omnichannel Consistency
Even within demand generation, Servat doesn’t favor any one channel: “What we've learned three years in with the brand is that your approach has to be omnichannel. If I am targeting you as a prospect, there has to be that multi-touch approach where you see the brand in five to seven to nine different ways and in different places.”
That effort at ubiquity still aims to include those brand pillars of connection and community. A simple email campaign that Visible sent managed to uplift people during some of the scariest early days of the pandemic. The social initiative asking how customers were holding up during the pandemic had an unexpected impact. “We sent a very fast CRM email to our members just to check in,” said Servat. “The amount of responses that we got from that single send was absolutely unbelievable. They were all saying, ‘I've never had a company and a brand send me an email just saying we want to hear how you're doing’.
That effort was emblematic of its #VisibleActsofKindness campaign, as well, which garnered over 2 million organic interactions—supporting human connection without trying to sell. “The only thing that we asked for was for you to pay the kindness forward,” said Servat. “It showed, once again, what can happen for a brand if you show up [...] in a really kind and genuine way. People respond to it, even when you don't ask for the likes, the clicks, and the follows.”
"Our campaign, "Visible Acts of Kindness," showed what can happen for a brand if you show up in a really kind and genuine way. People respond to it. Even when you don't ask for the likes, and clicks and follows."
For the full audio interview with Servat, please listen to Episode 39 of Insider Interviews.
November 2, 2021
