Sprint Spending $100 Million to Advertise iPhone Knock-Off

Mark Wilson reports at Gizmodo:

Starting May 9th, Sprint will begin a massive, $100 million marketing campaign aimed straight at the iPhone’s nether regions. Stacking its [Samsung] Instinct against the iPhone, Sprint hopes to show that EVDO and GPS make their product way better than anything coming out of Cupertino.

They’ve got video of the first two spots. Watch them.

As Wilson writes, it boggles the mind that Sprint is hanging a $100 million dollar advertising campaign on two features — GPS and EVDO networking — that the iPhone is widely-rumored to be picking up in its next-generation hardware. Worse, side-by-side, even in commercials commissioned by Sprint, the Instinct looks like crap next to an iPhone — the screen is way smaller and way less bright.

What’s clear is that Sprint is run by MBA-trained executives who see everything as a general “business” problem. In their minds, the same things apply to selling phones as toothpaste. How about this idea: Take $100 million and use it to design a better phone?

★ Wednesday, 7 May 2008