Verizon and Ericsson, two telecoms companies, are pooling the insights and muscle that support their different brands in order to champion new 5G services they jointly are bringing to business-to-business customers.

Danny Johnson, director of product marketing/network services at Verizon Enterprise Solutions, and Analisa Dominic, head/marketing for Ericsson’s Verizon customer unit, discussed this topic at the 2019 Digital Marketing World Forum North America.

And the tie-up between the two organisations, they reported, covers everything from positioning this 5G offering to developing campaigns, crafting digital content and running in-person events.

Dominic suggested that aligning brands of this scale was a “major hurdle” that had to be overcome on the path to achieving deep, meaningful collaboration.

“How are we going to go public with two of these powerful brands who have very specific instructions on how to use them and where to use them?” she asked. (For more, read WARC’s in-depth report: Verizon meets Ericsson: How two power brands join forces to promote 5G technology.)

Rather than discovering a simple formula that underpinned this outcome, Johnson asserted that on-going hard work is an essential component of the process.

“This was the culmination of a lot of work, a lot of design sessions, a lot of staying up late nights, a lot of debates, a lot of aligning on our strategies from a technical perspective, but also from an operational and even a marketing perspective,” he said.

Prior partnerships between the two firms also helped establish a high degree of trust, which is vital to such an affiliation yielding long-term success.

“What I appreciate is the fact that [Verizon and Ericsson] both invested in what you see in the marketplace today. We share each other's risks; we share each other's rewards. And we have that level of trust … And that just doesn't happen overnight,” said Johnson.

Johnson highlighted another implicit benefit of a powerbrand partnership: that is, consistent access to a truly expert, but external, viewpoint on 5G.

“There are some things that, candidly, we've done that we didn't necessarily think about. But Ericsson … came to us and was very passionate about certain things that we ought to do: certain tactics, different types of outreach.

“This all becomes about this notion of … one plus one equals two. But it really doesn't equal two in our context,” he said. “It’s one plus one equals three.”

Sourced from WARC