As Sprint Corp. and Nextel Communications Inc. begin to merge their separate identities into one company, there will be obvious comparisons to how Cingular Wireless L.L.C. integrated AT&T Wireless Services Inc. to form the nation’s largest wireless carrier.
Sprint Nextel Corp. is not planning to combine immediately its CDMA and iDEN networks, so the pressure is off in that regard. But the first task that must be accomplished flawlessly is its most important: reassuring loyal Nextel customers that nothing has really changed, while at the same time pointing out to the rest of the world the benefits of the combined entity.
I’m skeptical if it can be pulled off as grandly as the Cingular-AWS “Raising the Bar” ad campaign. Part of the reason I’m doubtful is simply because Nextel customers are so loyal to Nextel. Nextel consistently reports among the lowest churn and highest ARPU in the industry. Nextel’s subscribers also are a bit of a different breed.
In contrast, Sprint’s personality centers on innovative phones and a guy in a trench coat who spends a lot of time talking to everyday people. Although I never liked Nextel’s “How Business Gets Done” campaign, it likely found favor with the business audience it was targeting. Furthermore, Nextel’s strength never came from its marketing message; it came from its push-to-talk service.
In contrast, Cingular in its pre-merger days didn’t have a strong ad campaign (Was it Rollover minutes that succeeded its disastrous Jack icon effort?). Cingular’s “Raising the Bar” marketing campaign likely appealed to AWS business users, who know it’s good to be No. 1.
What will Nextel subscribers think of Sprint Nextel, with Sprint as the dominant name? They need to be reassured that push-to-talk services will continue, that there won’t be another 26 million subscribers clogging their network (those annoying teens will stay with the Sprint CDMA service) and that basically, not much will change.
But Sprint is the main name going forward. The Nextel name will continue as a brand for services geared toward selected businesses, public-sector customers and “high-value individuals who have proven to be avid users of Nextel services,” company execs said earlier this year when they announced branding efforts for the new company.
Maybe the only marketing move that really matters is that the NASCAR Nextel Cup Series will live on with that brand in the racing world-at least through 2006. Even the most loyal customers can only handle so much change at once.
