Sprint to kill off Hesse commercials for better or worse
Let’s face it, Sprint’s latest round of commercials haven’t exactly been well received. Many found Hesse’s attempt to be the “people’s CEO” laughable while a much smaller group thought it was cool that he wasn’t afraid to engage the public. How many other CEOs do people openly recognize other than titans like Steve Jobs and Steve Ballmer? Regardless, Sprint has decided enough is enough and the run is no more. We’re not quite sure what route Sprint will be taking next in terms of advertising but with its Simply Everything plans bundling so many cool features at competitive pricing, perhaps it should use the money saved elsewhere while we await the Pre. Customer service maybe? After all, Sprint’s Customer Care department is thought by many to be one of the main reasons customers are ditching Sprint.
Thanks, Roger A!
I didn’t call people idiots for staying with Sprint. I said that people arguing that the ads were effective are. Obviously they weren’t or they wouldn’t have been pulled. My other point was that the only people that thought the ads were “spot on” and “effective” are the current Sprint fanboys. I say fanboys because only a true fanboy would take time out of their lives to defend a cell phone company, any cell phone company and its advertising.
No matter how Sprint advertises itself, I think it’s going to fall on deaf ears. They have given away the farm from a pricing stand point, improved their CS, and yet people still leave in droves. So either they are still not doing a good job of CS or are missing the mark with their handsets. The fanboys can beat the Sprint drum all they want but the numbers don’t lie. They aren’t doing an effective job of retention or cultivating new customers in their business model or their advertising.
In fact, the ONLY reason the people in my office who use Sprint have given me for staying on Sprint is the cut rate pricing. And most are waiting for their contact to expire to move elsewhere.
I can say the plans were less effective with him in them then before. I mean I could care less if the CEO tells me how great your company is, frankly a CEO saying anything shows opposite.
Customer Care is definitely not going up. Matter of fact I’m having an issue with them over a rep in store and cancelling over being so offended by him. There is a reason they lose customers. Its not from phones, plans, overages, or even bad commercials, they need to hire T-Mobile to do their Customer Care dept instead of spending money on petty airtime with a CEO.
Recently filming began for new Sprint commercials WITH ACTORS. Also, a casting agency was holding auditions for male actors, prior to the audition they were given info on the Pre. When it came time for the auditioning, they were told to talk about the Pre. Filming is due to start this month. I am not sure if any female actors were included. It wasn’t clear if this was for Palm or Sprint. As for the Hesse commercials, yeah… I think they ran too long. Lastly, Sprints customer service has made a HUGE turnaround.
@EvilHomer: ‘Some’ go well beyond being simple “fanboys” and into either obsessed or have financial stakes involved. There is simply no other explanation why they would live on blogs given their pattern of promotional posting.
Otherwise, you’ve nailed the rationale for this move by Sprint and those responding.
1 comment about Sprint’s Customer Care by all accounts including consumer reports and JD powers, sprints CCare has taken a rather large turn for the better and as I understand it that is one of their main focuses for 2009.
I wanted Sprint to hire t mo’s customer care VIP when Forsee resigned but Hesse has put some good initiatives out the ads are what’s disappointing
i liked the commercials. nice change from 1,000,000 network people following a customer or people selling rollover mins in a yard sale
@DonVinnie: How do you propose Sprint advertise that they’ve turned themselves around, given the common perception of insulting customer service, poor coverage and dropped calls, and history of constant billing errors which exists? If you do not advertise that the company and network have changed for the better, it doesn’t matter what phones they support.
YoYo Said:
i liked the commercials. nice change from 1,000,000 network people following a customer or people selling rollover mins in a yard sale
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And yet it works for Verizon and AT&T.
At least they aren’t some dreary, black and white, overcast winter gloomy days with a string quartet playing low key music in the background while some weirdo walks around in a trench coat talking about technology. Christ, it looks like a commercial for an anti-depressant. Bring out some Sun and color…
And to those that keep tooting the CCare has HUGELY improved, what good is it doing them? They still loose a million plus customers a quarter. What is their pitch going to be? “Now that we see it’s killing the company, Sprint would like to apologize for the shit way we’ve treated you for years and promise not to do it again. Just PLEASE bring back your dollars??”
I personally didn’t like the commercials. Given how technical the current generation is I didn’t think it was all that wise of Sprint to parade an old guy around and have him say “gee whiz these phones sure are fancy, look at all the things you can do with them.” It gave me the impression that Sprint was still behind the times and hadn’t yet realized what year it was.
That being said I’ve been a Sprint customer for a long time and their customer serivce has definitely take a large step forward. When I go over my minutes someone calls me to see if I still believe i’m on the right plan. Call quality is high and their internet is faster than anybody elses. Stuff like that has really made them one of the better companies in my mind. For me however, cool phones are trump and I had been toying with the idea of leaving for an iPhone but with the pre on the way I’ll be staying with Sprint forsure.
Wow, so testy on these commercials. People here are wagging the dog, the story isn’t the commercials are gone because of Dan, or the message. It’s that it’s obvious Sprint has chosen a different demographic to now go-after, and thus, the commercials that were aimed at reasonable, non-teeny-booper, middle aged folks (read: the payers) should be retired.
Talk about reading too much into things.
the former MASTER should just put his company up for sale US Cellular, Leap, Metro, somebody buy them out….
they weren’t very appealing
these were the dumbest commerials IMO because you had an older guy pictured in black&white with classical music, which made me think it targeted a more mature audience.
BUT he was talking about young kids stuff like texting, and all the cool new things phones do that only the younger generation care about.
They were totally unfocused. Are you going after the older demographic (who would more likely care about pricing and minutes) or the young demographic (who cares about all the cool new features)?
The commercials sucked IMHO. I think when they srated making them they likely had a good idea (their hearts were in the right place) but after a while they began to suck.
Those T-Mo commercials though …. LMAO!!!
“I love you honey, and i really mean it this time”
As long as we have to deal with Picture Mail instead of true MMS, along with the Xoomerang service to upload to Youtube (when MMS would work just fine) along with the same old phones, nothing new. People will continue to leave.
Picture Mail and Xoomerang are both services licensed to Sprint by Verisign so they pay a pretty penny for them I am sure, but no one wants them.
Actually Sprint is not retireing the commericals with Dan H. It may have not reasonated with Bloggers, but with the general public it is one of the most recognizable ads far as brand marketing for all carriers. The ads are doing what they are supposed to do and that is put a face on the Sprint brand. BGR is wrong on this one. Market research has shown that after customer see these commercials they are remembered and people remember what company they are for Sprint. so dont expect a big change in Sprint’s marketing …Dan is here to stay
Dan isn’t the problem, the lack of color and presentation of more phones was for me. The spots said most of what needed to be said
Everytime this commercial comes on i press mute, the music is boring and I dont want to hear him talk! I hope spring gets a some better commercials for the Pre
look customer care is great.they hear people saying it so they try to fix it.i had every cell company twice and all cc reps are pretty much the same.most of the people that say sprint has bad cc agents are old customers who had sprint 8 years ago when sprint really did suck(i mean sucked bad).i shop around pretty often and i need to save money but i cant find a better deal than my sero plan.$38.00 including tax which includes unlimited calling with my sprint to home feature along with my grandcentral account.i dont care if the cc people were so bad that they hung up on me everytime i call them because i cant find nothing better.get it together people
haha i always thought those commercials looked like they were from the great depression, maybe sprint didnt enjoy the irony
Bring back the trebchcoat dude.
I really did like those spots with the Sprint Guy and the X Files like music playing in the background visiting people to show how good the service is and all that’s included.
After all the trouble I had getting my wife out of her Nextel contract (they told me I could not cancel my account because I was out of contract), I’ll never step anywhere near Sprint. I have T-Mobile, but their customer service is the best I’ve ever seen.
Exactly, throw an HTC in there.