At&t and Verizon Wireless

There are two commercial kings in the service provider business: AT&T and Verizon Wireless. The two corporations relentlessly compete for the affection and conversion of each other's customers, releasing several advertisement campaigns per year. This forces one to pose the question: Which company uses advertisement appeals more effectively to reel in consumers? Verizon Wireless' commercials are more effective than AT&T's because of its better utilization of advertising appeals to pander to more VALS and appeal to a wider demographic.

Firstly, Verizon uses humor, magic ingredients, plain folks, patriotism and transfer in its advertisements to please the consumer; AT&T, on the other hand, uses more weasel words and Avante Garde than any other technique. For example, in its "Bad Idea" commercial, Verizon effectively combines the humor of people all blindly carrying out stupid actions, while it uses weasel words to point out that its network is the fastest in America. Conversely, AT&T's "Neighbors" ad somewhat humorously demonstrates a family's decision to be ahead of the times by getting a fast 3G plan. Based on multiple advertisements and commercials assessed, Verizon uses advertising appeals more successfully than AT&T in the current marketing campaigns when reeling buyers in.

VALS are broken into eight categories that describe consumers and provide a basis for targeting an audience when selling a product. These VALS types include: innovators, thinkers, believers, achievers, strivers, experiencers, makers, and survivors. Verizon Wireless and AT&T both do an exceptional job catering to the appropriate VALS types; and they are both able to target many categories with their approach. Through Verizon's different advertising appeals they are able to indulge to most of the VALS types such as innovators, believers, achievers, and experiencers. AT&T is just as good as Verizon although they are unable to gratify believers as strongly due to their lack of the patriotism advertising appeal. Innovators are consumers that often strive to have the finer things in life and prefer to be looked upon as leaders who achieve independence and continue to seek out challenges in their lifestyles. Verizon and AT&T are able to tempt to innovators due to the constant upgrading of their products and the avante garde technique putting innovators at the top of the consuming market. Believers are somewhat of opposites when compared to innovators; they are very predictable and tend to reach for products "made in the USA", or products from one of their favorite corporations. Verizon gets a slight upper hand here by making many of their advertisements focused on the American value for life. Although AT&T is also a United States company they do not choose to advertise it as Verizon does. Achievers are very active consumers who focus on the big name brands and