We just saw the latest episode in the T-Mobile-Sprint wireless rivalry, as Sprint flew a promotional banner over its competitor’s Bellevue headquarters on Friday afternoon.
The marketing ploy came shortly after Sprint named Annette Jacobs its new president of the Pacific Northwest region. In an internal email announcing the promotion, Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure wrote that she’s “eager to take on a challenge that will be one of her most important assignments: Beat T-Mobile in its own backyard!!!”
Sure enough, it looks like Jacobs has taken those marching orders to heart. The only problem: this isn’t exactly T-Mobile’s first rodeo.
The company that wrote the book on these kinds of stunts seemed unimpressed on Friday, pointing out via Twitter how similar the banner was to that time T-Mobile hired a skywriter to write a message above Verizon’s campus in Basking Ridge, New Jersey.
.@sprint Cute plane! Let us know if you want to borrow the rest of our marketing guidebook to copy. pic.twitter.com/o4OqYSo9IC
— T-Mobile? (@TMobile) November 20, 2015
Skywriting seems a little bit cooler than flying a banner, though it appears neither really had the impact the companies were hoping for.
Er @sprint if ur going 2 fly a plane around the TMUS campus get a bigger banner so we can read it? #beentheredonethat @JohnLegere
— Serena (@SGlossey) November 20, 2015
@sprint is a bit of a joke right now. Plane buzzing the @tmobile campus and banner so small, cant read it. https://t.co/yOVDnm7iVH
— Brian Luke (@briangluke) November 20, 2015
What’s more likely to get T-Mobile antsy this holiday shopping season is the resurrection of Sprint’s half-off promotion, which drove a record-setting quarter for the company last year.
But T-Mobile has the lead in the battle for third place right now, and it’s probably going to take a lot more than a few stunts to turn that around.
