Sprint subs humor for CEO in its new advertising campaign

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Sprint Nextel is swapping out the black-and-white ads featuring CEO Dan Hesse for two new campaigns that mention Twitter, wheelbarrows full of quarters and miracle banana diets.

One campaign, called ‘The Now Network: What’s Happening Now?’ seeks to “demonstrate all the things that happen on the Now Network in today’s fast-paced world,” said Bill Morgan, senior vice president of corporate marketing for Sprint.

The TV spot (click here to download video of the ad) is chock-full of stats: It tells us that right now in the Now Network, 1 million e-mails are en route and that 7% of them contain the words “miracle banana diet.” We also learn that twice as many people are searching the Internet for dogs as for cats, that 2 million people are sending a text message during a business meeting (diapers are the most popular subject) and that 6 million people are researching restaurants on their phones in a cab. Twenty-nine of them just left said phone in the cab (in the TV shot, they’re all women).

You’ll be seeing ‘What’s Happening Now’ ads on TV, in print and on billboards. They’ll appear online with a micro-site, banner ads and homepage takeovers on YouTube, Yahoo, MSN, and AOL beginning at the end of the month, Sprint said today in a release.

The other campaign, ‘Why Throw Your Money Away,’ creates situations in which people throw their money away and others watch, incredulous. One of the first shows a family raking and leaf-blowing dollar bills into trash bags while neighbors stare. A voice-over urges viewers to switch to Sprint’s Everything Data Family Plan to save $360 a year over comparable AT&T and Verizon Wireless plans.

The ads are more lighthearted than the carrier’s previous campaign, which featured Hesse talking to viewers, with classical music in the background. In one, he shilled the company’s Simply Everything plan. His e-mail address flashed at the end of the spot. In another, he sat in a diner encouraging people to stop by a Sprint store to learn how to get the most out of their phones. Many of the ads talked about the state of the economy and seemed serious because they were in black and white.

But Sprint has been struggling to revamp its image as it loses subscribers to other carriers. Sprint lost 4.5 million customers in 2008, while AT&T and Verizon added 2.1 million and 1.4 million respectively. It’s been focusing on improving its notoriously bad customer service, and Hesse said recently that he hoped the Palm Pre, which will run exclusively on Sprint’s network, would also attract customers to the third-place wireless carrier. Yanking Hesse from the ads had nothing to do with the economic situation, Sprint has said.

-- Alana Semuels