Soon after purchasing’s Yahoo’s core business in a $4.8 billion deal, leading carrier Verizon has decided to take the cultural route to endear itself to Hispanic consumers across the country. The network has tied up with popular actress Gina Rodriguez to let Hispanics get to meet with popular role models of Hispanic identity exclusively and to share their experiences. The carrier is enabling this through a contest on Twitter and Instagram where its consumers will be able to qualify by posting written entries, images and videos and will be judged based on the quality of their entries. If you’re interested in participating in the contest, you will need to post your entry using #LoMejorDeMi and tagging @Verizon either on Twitter or on Instagram.
Apart from Gina Rodriguez who will be the face of the Bienvenido a lo Mejor campaign, Verizon has hand-picked a number of celebrities of Hispanic origin like celebrity chef Juan Manuel Barrientos who runs the popular El Cielo restaurant in Miami, soccer star Alejandro Bedoya, beauty vlogger Yasmin Maya and celebrated musician Megan Nicole to meet and greet with their fans and promote the carrier in the process. All these stars share an impressive Hispanic fan following and an opportunity to meet them is an opportunity no fan would want to miss out on. By enabling such interactions, Verizon wants to sends out the message that it is playing a leading role in enabling people to communicate with each other and maintain personal and professional relationships. “Hispanics keep their pulse on dozens of passion points: from friends and family to pop culture, sports and cuisine. Staying connected to the people and passions that interest them the most is very important to their lifestyles, and requires the strongest network, as they navigate fluidly between all their worlds and all their interests,” said Andrade-Marin, Marketing Director at Verizon. The contest will run till August 15th after which the winners will be announced.
This isn’t the first time that a leading U.S. network carrier has taken steps to stay close to the Hispanic community. A couple of years ago, T-Mobile formed a partnership with Univision Mobile, an MVNO dedicated to Hispanic users, to offer free minutes to both cellphones and landlines users in the U.S. to make calls to eight Latin countries as well as Mexico. A year earlier, Solavei, another T-Mobile MVNO, diversified its offering to Hispanic users to allow them to earn monthly discounts by adding users to the network through a referral program. Even though Verizon’s Bienvenido a lo Mejor campaign may turn out to be a big hit, it remains to be seen if the network will be able to add substantial Hispanic customers from across the country to its impressive user base during the course of the campaign.