Shirt Removal Made Easy

In support of their recent tagline, “Sprint Ahead” the telecom company has released a series of instructional viral videos produced by the Jun Group about saving time. Three videos are currently up on YouTube. One shows you how to take your shirt off in a hurry (see above). You can see all the videos (how to get ketchup out of a bottle; open a bottle with another bottle; soothe a baby) on the companion website – Sprint Waitless.

There’s nothing actually wrong with Sprint trying to show younger consumers that using their service will save them time. Wait. How does Sprint save you time? Ah… and there’s the rub. If you only see the YouTube end of this campaign, you will receive no actual information. It looks like Sprint just spent a lot of money in an attempt to try and be cool. After digging around on the site we see that Sprint is offering unlimited calling beginning at 7pm rather than 9 pm. Right. We get it. You don’t have to wait to chat with your pals. The copy on the site adds to the confusion – “turn tedious tasks into fleeting moments…” Whoa. What does that have to do with bumping up the time our unlimited calling starts? This whole “Waitless” campaign should be reflecting Sprint’s effective, quick, robust service and lack of dropped calls rather than two more hours of free chatting.

Ray Ban’s first viral spot was genius. They’re goals were clearly to increase brand awareness among a younger set of consumers that resulted in hundreds of spoof videos. They weren’t trying to push a specific message or service. Even if Sprint’s videos catch on with YouTube viewers, we’re wondering how many of the viewers will: a) go to the micro site and b) actually understand that Sprint is offering two more free hours of calling and c) create spoofs that are have anything to do with the service being offered.

Seems like a rickety campaign to us.