‘Content is King’, but sometimes ads can work without saying a word. That was my thought two weeks ago with the discussion of T-Mobile’s ads in comparison to Sprint’s.
Now Sprint has two interesting programs that show they like to provide substance.
The first is its iPhone Forever Strategy.
In effect you will always have the latest iPhone and since many people are looking forward to the iPhone 7 this is a great Apple strategy.
Can it backfire?
Recent articles about Apple indicate some chinks in the armor as the iPad has saturated its initial market and looks for Enterprises to adopt. The Apple TV strategies have either folded or gone through a price increase. The iPhone 7 may not be the Earth-crushing success that other iPhones have been, but it’s likely that won’t be noticed for the first six months of existence. My anecdotes about iPhone users are that often people apologize to me that they still have a 4 or a 5. That kind of mentality suggests Sprint is going to have a successful strategy.
As long as they people do it now ahead of the announcement, Sprint can manage the preorder. Otherwise they will be in the news for fulfillment problems.
The second strategy won’t make for ads, but is a good move: A free year of service for customers with DirecTV.
As AT&T bundles DirecTV with wireless plans, we now have Sprint trying to stem the tide by keeping customers’ video separate from their wireless. In truth, based on the over the top video market, this should be easy to accomplish. However it may be that that this strategy points to another issue.
Does video bundling ever make sense?
Amazon’s Fire and Verizon’s MediaFlo point to the fact that customers don’t associate watching with using. There may be a day when bundling works, but it strikes me is that it’s not going to be based on the phone, but on the content.
I give kudos to Sprint for its strategies. Now let’s see how the market responds.
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