In what may be the least surprising news of the week, Sprint executives officially announced plans to “simplify” their creative efforts moving forward.
Yes, that means no more “Framily” and no more Frobinsons despite Sprint CMO Jeff Hallock’s earlier claims that the “decision is still to be determined.” Here’s the killer quote delivered by new President/CEO Maurcelo Claure at Goldman Sachs 23rd Annual Communacopia Conference (which sounds like an awesome party):
“Our plans are confusing [and our] marketing was a hamster talking to people. We are having a hard time selling the products.”
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OK, now tell us how you really feel.
Here’s more via Mediapost:
- Sprint is going in “100% in terms of changing its advertising”
- “…it’s always going to be simple”
- “…we are always going to give you double the data. And the reason why we did that is I don’t know if any of you know gigs and gigabytes and megabytes, but I don’t.”
We could feel that last quote instilling confidence in Sprint investors. In case you needed a clue as to where the company will go with its future campaigns, the key word is BORING:
“Whenever you got to make a choice of why you are going to buy a phone, you are going to buy it because of pricing.
…you are going to see us now be the value driver and then you are going to see us potentially in the market for really strong advertisement network.”
We have no idea how effective Claure will be as a chief executive, but he’s an incredible public speaker.
Seems that whichever lucky agency Sprint picks at the end of its just-launched review will be pressured to keep things vanilla and focus on pricing, pricing and pricing with a little emphasis on pricing for good measure.
Unfortunately, we don’t think we’ll ever fully understand the hamster.