TracFone taps Interlex as for new brand launch.

San Antonio-based, cause-related marketing agency, Interlex has been selected as the general market and multicultural AOR for TracFone Wireless’ latest business venture.  TracFone Wireless is rolling out its newest brand, SafeLink Wireless, to over 5.2 million potential customers in 13 U.S. states. 

SafeLink Wireless serves as TracFone’s distribution of Lifeline – a U.S. government supported program for income eligible households that ensures telephone service is available and affordable for eligible low-income households. SafeLink Wireless serves as a ground-breaking wireless modernization of the program, providing a free cell phone and 68 rollover minutes each month to poverty-stricken communities for calls of urgent nature.  

“Interlex is covering the spectrum from a marketing discipline standpoint,” said Rudy Ruiz, President and CEO, Interlex. “We’re tailoring messaging for multiple ethnicities and demographics and we’re instituting communications strategies that educate and empower communities, from the consumer to the high-level government official,” Ruiz added.

Interlex will embark on an advertising campaign in which highlights include:  extensive direct response TV, outdoor (traditional and non-traditional), bus wraps and shelters, as well as advertising in ethnic and senior media as appropriate by market.

The public relations aspect of the campaign involves, general market, Hispanic and African American communications and media relations; partnership development – gaining the support of government and nonprofit organizations and faith-based institutions who service low-income communities; celebrity identification and enrollment; and a government relations aspect including rallying national, state and local elected-officials around SafeLink Wireless.

“It’s the direction we are headed as an agency, bridging the space between corporations, elected officials, government officials and nonprofits and uniting them collectively behind cause-related campaigns and groundbreaking public-private partnerships like SafeLink.” Ruiz stressed. “It’s utilizing the power of marketing to impact the world in a positive way,” he added.

“We’re proud to be one of the only firms in the country that can execute general market and multicultural public relations to influence everyone from soccer moms to new arrival Latinos,” said Rolando Rodriguez, Managing Director of Public Relations and Community-based Outreach, Interlex. “Our clients get that they are working in minority-majority markets and that thriving media universes such as Spanish-language media and Black media have to be part of the overall public relations strategy, not just an afterthought. Seeing general market PR as encompassing multicultural is not a far-fetched idea anymore. It’s the reality.”