With a fresh year just under way, many wireless carriers are re-evaluating their marketing strategies-in some cases putting their accounts up for review. Cingular Wireless L.L.C. last week began a nationwide re-branding campaign to wrap all of its customers under the blanket of newly unified owner AT&T Inc.; Sprint Nextel Corp. quickly put its creative advertising account up for review at the beginning of the year; and regional wireless operator SunCom Wireless Holdings Inc. recently named a new advertising agency.
Albeit perceived small on a carrier-by-carrier snapshot, a more thorough look reveals that many wireless carriers are rolling into 2007 with fresh eyes. The public face of wireless carriers is also in mid shift.
In September, T-Mobile USA Inc. began slowly phasing out Catherine Zeta-Jones as the high-profile spokeswoman for the No. 4 carrier, while Sprint Nextel teamed up with Actor Ron Livingston to introduce the No. 3 carrier’s “Power up” campaign.
Telecom outpaces industry
With a new year comes new advertising budgets for the big players in the telecom industry, which have been the top spenders in advertising for years-outpacing major brand names like Ford, Toyota, Chevron and McDonalds.
Each of the top four wireless carriers declined to provide details on their advertising budgets or strategies, and final numbers for the second half of 2006 aren’t yet available from TNS Media Intelligence, an outfit that tracks advertising spending. Advertising Age, a sister publication of RCR Wireless News, also compiles an annual list of the top 200 U.S. advertising spenders.
With the latest numbers still coming in, RCR Wireless News took a look at carriers’ advertising budgets for the first half of 2005 and compared those to the first half of 2006.
Verizon Wireless was the biggest spender for both periods, yet there’s potential for AT&T to leapfrog past the No. 2 carrier in advertising spending this year after its recently completed acquisition of Bellsouth Corp. brought the Cingular brand under one company and an advertising budget focused at re-branding all of its services as AT&T. However, Cingular was the only major carrier that spent less on advertising during the first half of 2005 than it did in the first half of 2006.
All in all, as budgets flush out for 2007, each carrier’s advertising budget appears to be lock-in-step with its ranking among the top four U.S. carriers.
Individual numbers
- Verizon Wireless spent $937.7 million in the first half of 2006, representing a 13.2-percent increase from the $828.6 million it spent in the same period the previous year.
- Cingular spent $628.6 million in the first half of 2006, which was a 10.1-percent decrease in spending from the $698.9 million it spent in the first half of 2005.
AT&T’s numbers are more difficult to draw conclusions from based on the major shakeup the brand has gone through during the previous two years. The carrier was the fourth-largest spender in advertising during the first half of 2006-plunking down $511.5 million. Yet no comparison can be made to the previous year when it was still operating as separate entities SBC Communications Inc. and BellSouth. BellSouth, which ranked No. 126 in U.S. advertising spending in the first half of 2006, spent $75.3 million during that period, representing a 14.7-percent increase from the $65.7 million it spent in the same period in 2005. - Sprint Nextel, the fifth-largest advertising spender in the first half of 2006, jumped up from the No. 7 spot in overall U.S. advertising during the same period in 2005. It pushed past Toyota and Chevrolet with a 30.6-percent increase in spending during the studied periods. The No. 3 wireless carrier spent $496 million in the first half of 2006, up from the $397.7 million it spent during the same period the previous year.
“Our strategic mix is fairly proprietary . whether that’s through TV, print, online or other mediums. Demographics are certainly important to us as we begin to map the appropriate plans/phones and innovations to the right target audience,” Sprint Nextel spokeswoman Mary Nell Westbrook said. “We know young adults and teens love music, we know early adopters and tech-focused users like PDAs . so, yes, part of our marketing strategy has been and will continue to be segment focused.” - T-Mobile USA had the second-largest upward shift in ad spending with a 23-percent increase from the first half of 2005 to the first half of 2006. The No. 4 carrier spent $284.6 million in the first half of 2006, up from the $231.4 million it spent in the same period in 2005.
