Who’s the guy in the leather pants?
T-Mobile CEO John Legere Tweeted out a teaser of the company’s Super Bowl ads yesterday: A picture of a “rock star” in a leather vest and leather pants, performing in front of a cheering crowd. But it wasn’t clear who exactly was doing the performing. (We first thought it was Slash from Guns N’ Roses) Now we know.
Yep, Tim Tebow, the former Denver Broncos quarterback who took social media by storm in 2011, has turned pitchman for the Bellevue-based wireless carrier. Tebow’s a free agent, and that means T-Mobile thinks he’s the perfect guy to show off all the things he can do without a contract.
“T-Mobile came to me with a great idea around a fun and creative Super Bowl spot. I love what they’ve been doing and how they treat their customers,” Tebow said in a press release. “It was a blast filming all of the various scenes, and working with T-Mobile to highlight their concept around no contracts for their customers.”
Tebow shows off a variety of activities he’s able to do while he’s off contract, including saving puppies, tackling Bigfoot, riding in a rodeo and pulling off a 70s-era cop movie car chase.
It’s yet another move by T-Mobile to introduce a little wackiness into the wireless industry. After all, this is the company whose CEO wasn’t afraid to fire off a few expletives at CES just to make a point about what he thought of his competitors, and released a fake press release from AT&T following the company’s earnings announcement.
The analogy falls a little flat. Tebow doesn’t have a contract because he hasn’t been performing well, and nobody in the NFL wants him. I’m not sure that’s the message T-Mobile wants to send.
Here’s the second ad that’s going to be running on Sunday:
