Upon his hiring in August of 2014, new Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure vowed to ‘get Sprint back in the game,’ announcing to all employees during a town hall meeting that he would be aggressive in his approach to shaking up the struggling wireless carrier in order to put the company in a better position to compete against its main competitors AT&T and Verizon. One of Claure’s first moves was to essentially kill the Sprint ‘Framily’ plan and immediately pull all advertising related to it. Claure believed that among many things, the group data plan, commercials and advertising campaign was just too confusing. Framily was replaced with the ‘Sprint Family Share Pack,’ a plan that offers customers significantly more data for their dollar than what they would get from other carriers.
The advertising for this plan, one that began running within the first week of the new CEO’s tenure, was the essence of one based on functional attributes. Utilizing bold lettering, the ‘in your face’ message cuts right to the chase providing the essential facts to covey that according to Sprint, this new campaign is ‘the best deal in data.’ In this marketing approach, Sprint went from one end of the spectrum to the other. The response from customers can be summed up from a tweet sent directly to the Sprint Twitter account the day the plan was announced on Aug. 18 that read, “@sprint doesn’t matter if it’s unlimited when I can only get dialup speed, pretty much anywhere in the state. Lies. That’s all I get.”
It is my opinion that Sprint and Claure should have taken an approach similar to the one former CEO Dan Hesse did in 2007-08. When Hesse was first introduced to lead the company, numerous television spots, filmed in black and white with a very simply style, featured him discussing a ‘wireless revolution’ that would change the way telecommunications companies worked. These 30-second spots featuring just Hesse, walking down a street talking directly to the camera creating an emotional connection with the then new CEO and Sprint customers.
Much like the advertising associated with the new ‘Family Share Pack,’ Sprint and Claure are cutting right to the chase with what they want, which is more customers as soon as possible. It appears they aren’t wasting time connecting with customers on an emotional level, rather targeting wallets instead of hearts.