Sprint Nextel revamps ads to focus on speed, data

Sprint Nextel Corp, said on Wednesday it would kick off a new advertising campaign

as the third biggest U.S. wireless service looks to improve the weak growth of recent quarters.

Sprint, which has been criticized in the past for its lack of a clear enough marketing message to make it stand out from rivals, said it would highlight its data services and the speed of its network in a national campaign starting July 1.

It also plans to exclude the Nextel brand from its ads except when it is promoting specific services, such as its push-to-talk walkie-talkie style feature, that came from Nextel Communications, which Sprint bought in 2005, a spokesman said.

Analysts had said the inclusion of the Nextel brand --primarily popular among business clients -- in advertising for Sprint -- a consumer focused brand -- had created a confusing marketing message since the merger.

Sprint, which has said it would report improvements in growth for the second quarter, has been losing market share to rivals as it has grappled with network problems and struggled to weed out low-value customers while it integrated Nextel.

Bigger rivals AT&T Inc and Verizon Wireless, a venture of Verizon Communications and Vodafone Group Plc , have focused in recent years on the reliability of their network coverage and their voice call services.

But Bill Morgan, a senior vice president for corporate marketing said Sprint wanted to move on to talking about data services such as music and navigation, where the company is strong, instead of focusing on voice-service reliability.

"Our network's a proven commodity ... People should expect that. They should be getting much more than that," he said.

Because of Sprint's success at signing up data customers some analysts have said that it could be most vulnerable to losing customers to Apple Inc's music playing iPhone, which AT&T is due to start selling on Friday.

Sprint's new ad campaign, which includes television, print, cinema and outdoor ads, was created by San Francisco-based Goodby, Silverstein & Partners. Sprint shifted its account to the Omnicom Group Inc unit in April to beef up marketing.

It had previously used Omnicom's TBWA/Chiat/Day and Pubicis & Hall Riney, a unit of Publicis for advertising.