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AAPRC Weekly: Jerri DeVard

Jerri DeVard
Senior Vice President, Marketing and Brand Management
Verizon Communications
New York NY

Ask Jerri DeVard what a typical day in the life of a top telecommunications executive looks like and she’ll tell you quickly: “There is no average day.” As senior vice president of marketing and brand management for Verizon Communications, DeVard oversees a staff of 400 nationwide, shaping all marketing communications strategies for the telecommunication giant’s consumer and small business segments. She
also shepherds Verizon’s brand management, market research and online market strategy.

These days the accomplished executive and her team are focused on Verizon’s salvos in the battle for market share among broadband providers. “We are consumed by the transformation of our company from a communications provider to a broadband provider,” she says. “…We are competing against not only other telcos, but we’re also competing with the cable companies and we’re also competing with the traditional
products and services…We moved from dial tone to broadband to TV. We’re stretching the boundaries of what people have expected from us, but we’re keeping up with what our customers want.”

DeVard’s current efforts to reach her customers include a new broadband advertising campaign, “Real Lives,” geared to African-Americans in the Philadelphia and Washington, DC markets; as well as Verizon’s ongoing sponsorship of music festivals and concerts (soul diva Mary J. Blige was a recent headliner).

The Verizon brand, it would seem, is in good hands. Reaching consumers is what DeVard does best, and has been doing her entire career. She’s sold everything from cake mix to casino gaming to cosmetics. “It’s always been about consumer behavior and convincing or persuading customers that your brand, your products and services are better than the others,” DeVard explains. “That’s been the thread through all of this, even though I’ve been in different industries.”

DeVard, who graduated from Spelman College with a degree in economics, was working as a trader when she decided she had some extra time on her hands. The trading floor closed early and DeVard’s not one for too much relaxing. She enrolled in the MBA program at Clark Atlanta University and became intrigued with brand management and marketing. “I knew that what I wanted to do was work in the field of creating consumer demand and understanding consumer behavior,” she recalls.

Just-printed MBA in hand, DeVard was heavily recruited and made her first foray into marketing at the Pillsbury Company in Minneapolis. Starting as a marketing assistant –– a job she had for about nine months before she was promoted –– DeVard moved quickly through the ranks. During her time at the company she held a number of management positions and learned what she says has been one of her most important career lessons. “There’s no substitute for performance, because at the end of the day you had to deliver,” DeVard says emphatically. “Consumer package goods companies will hire 20 MBAs in a class and you’ve got to distinguish yourself because everybody’s not going to get promoted…It is not a level playing field, so at the end of the day I had to be able to say here’s my accomplishments and for that to be irrefutable.”

After 11 years at Pillsbury, DeVard was drafted by the NFL. She left Pillsbury for the Minnesota Vikings, where she headed up their private suites marketing. She was excited about exploring sports and entertainment marketing, a new realm for her, plus she had the opportunity to build her staff from the ground up. During her year-and-a-half in the football arena, DeVard retooled the team’s pricing and renewal strategies for the suite business and adjusted to an entirely new corporate culture. “It was the NFL. People were driven more by emotion than the business,” DeVard recalls. “If the team won everybody was excited and happy and motivated. If the team lost you walked in the office, everybody’s head was hung down. The world was coming to an end, because sports is really a religion, and people live and die by that.”

After her stint in Minnesota, DeVard moved from the gridiron to the gaming floor. As vice president of marketing for Harrah’s highly-anticipated New Orleans casino –– the first land-based casino in the state –– DeVard found herself in the midst of an exciting new opportunity, as well as some sensational southern-fried politics. The casino had been a hotly debated issue and the company was under constant media scrutiny. In spite of it all, DeVard values her New Orleans experience. “It was a great town and I really enjoyed being there and I loved being associated with something as big as what Harrah’s meant to the city,” she says. “The thing that I hadn’t factored in was that when the doors [of a casino] open, they never close.” Because Harrah’s was up and running 24-7, so was DeVard. “I ate a lot of meals there, my family would meet me there,” she recalls. “It was exciting, but it was also a very physically demanding job in terms of your time…”

After the Harrah’s experience, DeVard, a Harlem-born New Yorker, returned to her hometown to work with Revlon. She spent two years at the cosmetics giant as vice president of marketing for color cosmetics, and later moved to Citigroup, where she was chief marketing officer responsible for the company’s e-Consumer line. She joined Verizon in 2003. “I looked for companies with big, established brands and the number one or number two positions in their category or industry because I knew then the burden was to maintain that, but also to continue to polish and protect that on an ongoing basis,” says DeVard of her career moves. “Really the fire in me was to work in areas that were very dependent upon consumer behavior and how you define that behavior and then create consumer desire and then create consumer demand.”

Along the way, DeVard has been driven by one single set of goals. “I have had the same goals from the day that I married my husband and decided to work, which was to be happy and successful. That’s all I ever wanted to do and be. I never wanted the corner office or a particular title…” she says. “Happy for me at the time was to be recognized for my accomplishments. To be moved along in the organization. To be valued. To have credibility. But it was also to be able to spend time with my husband, family and my friends.”

All indicators suggest that DeVard must be thrilled with the way things have turned out. Not only is she valued within her company, but her reputation extends beyond the halls of Verizon. Black Enterprise magazine named her one of the 75 most powerful African-Americans in corporate America. Her resume boasts tidbits like a seat on the board of directors of the Tommy Hilfiger Corporation, the Pepsi African-American advisory board and the board of trustees at Spelman College.

Her life outside the office includes a husband she declares her “life partner” –– whose career as an executive headhunter has been flexible enough to work with his wife’s multiple cross-country relocations –– and two young children. She works out, enjoys traveling and Broadway shows and, when she’s in town, sits down to nightly family dinners. And, each day, no matter where she is in the world, she talks by phone with her 70-year-old mother. “She has really been my rock and I can’t think of a thing we don’t talk about.”

AAPRC’s Mission
The African-American Public Relations Collective (AAPRC) is an assemblage of professionals who provide communication conduits among clients, journalists, media and our communities. We come together as a collective because we recognize the importance of building those same conduits amongst ourselves.

A great deal of what we do is professional development––updating our skills, keeping pace with technology, refining and streamlining processes, providing a forum to tackle the issues that impact our work environment––but we believe our professional lives benefit most from the forging of effective alliances. Connected to one another, we possess the power of a nationwide body of committed, knowledgeable practitioners with an eye on the future.

As we move into the 21st century at lightning speed, mass media and its potent messages occupy an ever-larger part of our daily lives and our collective psyche. The AAPRC is focused on helping our members gain a deeper understanding of media’s force and supporting their growth as powerful participants in the global communications network.

AAPRC’s Contact
GQ Media & Public Relations
1650 Broadway Suite 1011
New York NY 10019
1212 765 7910
1212 765 7905
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By Gwendolyn Quinn on 2/6/2006[read on] [7 comments]

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