T-Mobile US has staked its claim as the No. 3 U.S. carrier, bypassing Sprint earlier this year largely through aggressive marketing driven by colorful CEO John Legere. Now, Sprint has flipped the script and taken the marketing battle directly to T-Mobile US.
On Friday, Sprint had a small plane fly a promotional banner over T-Mobile US’ home offices in Bellevue, Washington. In October, T-Mobile US engaged a sky writer to fly over Verizon’s offices in Basking Ridge, New Jersey, to scrawl the message “end overages now.”
T-Mobile US quickly went to Twitter on Nov. 20 to point out the similarities: “@sprint Cute plane! Let us know if you want to borrow the rest of our marketing guide book to copy.”
The move from Sprint came in conjunction with the carrier naming Annette Jacobs president in the Pacific Northwest region.
GeekWire reports that a company memo from CEO Marcelo Claure said Jacobs is “eager to take on a challenge that will be one of her most important assignments: Beat T-Mobile in its own backyard!!!”
Sprint is in the process of cutting $2.5 billion from its operating budget; the company has announced job cuts, revised policies related to things like waste collection, snacks and transportation, and has also cut severance packages in half.
Sprint is also decentralizing its operation and splitting the country into four regions. The carrier will also have a president in 19 key metropolitan markets around the country.
On the promotions side, Sprint recently announced – amid much hype – it will cut customers’ bills in half if they changed from a rival competitor to Sprint.
For T-Mobile US, the company rolled out its Binge On promotion, which allows for unlimited streaming from select over-the-top platforms with the value-add that associated data won’t detract from the allocated data bucket.
