Verizon Targeting Customers of MCI

But Since Acquisition, Brand Is Disappearing

Verizon Communications Inc. launches an ad blitz for its new unit serving government and corporate customers today that is built around the client list, workers and global reach of the former MCI but that all but buries its brand.

Verizon Business, the new unit, is the result of Verizon's $8.5 billion acquisition of Ashburn-based MCI Inc., which had a customer base covering most of the Fortune 500 -- including Boeing Co. and McDonald's Corp. -- and deep experience serving the federal government. The vast majority of the new unit's roughly $20 billion in revenue and 35,000 employees are from MCI.

Verizon had already telegraphed its plans to start erasing the MCI name, announcing after the merger closed this month that the MCI Center in the District would become the Verizon Center.

In a television ad that the company plans to unveil today, Verizon is seeking to target the corporate clients that were MCI's bread and butter and to emphasize the mobile capabilities that Verizon Wireless can offer them -- all while playing down the MCI brand.

Verizon will launch a new set of products designed to let corporate and government workers access their networks securely while working from remote locations via wireless cards or land lines.

It plans to highlight the ability of Verizon's wireless network to provide "business continuity," giving companies access to their data even if natural disasters or terrorist attacks knock out land lines.

MCI's name appears on screen for only about two seconds in the TV ad, which shows executives working on laptops in an airport lounge, video conferencing from a boardroom and typing away on an airplane.

In a print ad introducing Verizon Business the company uses the word MCI only once, in small print near the bottom of the page.

Advertising executives said it made sense for the company to have adopted the Verizon brand for the new unit, saying MCI -- whose roots date to the 1960s, when it began competing with AT&T for corporate customers -- had never come up with an enduring advertising image or slogan.

"MCI let itself die a bit, and not having something iconic like the Sprint 'pin drop' has something to do with that," said Claudia Caplan, chief marketing officer for Mendelsohn Zien Advertising LLC in Los Angeles. "Verizon's 'Can you hear me now?' has really become part of the lexicon."

Steven Addis, chief executive of the Addis Group brand consultancy in Berkeley, Calif., said there are advantages to adopting a "master brand" because ads for Verizon Wireless, Verizon Business and Verizon's high-speed DSL Internet access will reinforce one another.

He said MCI's brand may have been tarnished by its merger with WorldCom Inc., whose accounting scandal and filing for bankruptcy protection generated reams of negative media reports.

"It's a very convenient solution to get rid of that, and it's far more efficient to live under one name," Addis said. "If you're out marketing, [and] you spend a dollar on Verizon, there is a halo effect over to Verizon Business and Verizon Wireless and all things Verizon because it's the same name. . . . You get a dividend across all of them."

To drive home the point, the Verizon Business television ad ends with the slogan "We never stop working for you," which often appears in Verizon Wireless commercials.