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SECURE SEAT

Verizon Wants You to Make Memes About Crappy Cable

TV is amazing. If I couldn’t go home and watch all things Bravo or crime shows or “30 Rock” or “Game of Thrones,” I just don’t know what I would do with myself.

Unfortunately, TV means cable, not just paying for it but putting up with one of the last bastions of atrocious customer service. (An eight-hour window for appointments?) It’s no surprise that Verizon is promoting its FIOS service with this new site, “Break Up with Cable.” Oh, it has memes, of course.

The  conceit is you can make your own cable-bashing memes by pairing your complaints with a fitting image using the Cheezburger meme generator platform. Once you create your meme and it is approved, it is shared on the site and you can share it on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook.

The site encourages you to “break up” with your cable provider and there is a link at the bottom for you to learn more about “hooking up” with something better. Clearly FiOS is trying to talk like millennials and reach them via Web culture messages that they can create themselves and understand.

For a branded site — and one from Verizon no less — this is pretty good. Obviously they are filtering out any negative memes about Verizon FiOS, which let’s face it isn’t all that different from the cable companies at the end of the day, but it’s still a good example of a brand adapting to Internet culture in a smart way that also happens to benefit its brand message.

The campaign was created by R/GA.

 

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