Verizon Business Group is a B2B consulting practice within the telecom giant that helps businesses accelerate their digital transformation. Pentagram partner Giorgia Lupi and team have developed a visual framework for “5 States of Ready,” a brand campaign and marketing strategy that uses data-driven storytelling to outline VBG’s dynamic capabilities. The system combines information design and brand identity to give VBG its own distinct presence as a sub-brand.

The Pentagram team collaborated on the project with Verizon and its advertising agency, McCann. The goal was to reframe the perception of Verizon for businesses from the wireless carrier everybody knows to a tech-enabled, digital consultancy à la IBM or Publicis Sapient. The concept identifies “five states” of VBG’s consulting methodology—start, adapt, elevate, innovate and disrupt—to help guide clients through the process of integrating digital technologies throughout their businesses.

Based in a language of data visualizations and infographics, the framework plots these unique journeys along networks of angled lines that echo the Verizon checkmark and the idea of human connection. On a practical level, it allows VGB and its representatives to pitch their approach to potential clients using a structure that can be easily customized in a variety of chart types. The system builds on the Verizon corporate identity program that Michael Bierut, Daniel Weil and Jon Marshall have been leading since 2015.