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Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Sprint Ambassador
I was a Sprint Ambassador for six months. For those who don’t want to click the link, Sprint sent me a free phone with free premium services (including NFL mobile, that I never used) because I was recognized as a “top blogger”. I don’t know how they came to that determination, but I’m guessing there must be someone in the Sprint marketing department who must be really into sabermetrics. My wife and I were/are coincidentally actually already Sprint users for several years, so we’re predisposed to give them a favorable rating.
Anyway, the program itself, while a good initial idea, was poor in its execution. There really was no two-way communication. I wrote some comments once, and I got the feeling it went into the internet abyss. Plus, the phone had so many features, I didn’t really want to learn too much of a phone that I had to give up in 6 months. And even if let’s say I wanted to use all the services, I had no idea how much anything cost, since the bill was redirected to their marketing department. So, say I really like the services, and decided that, ok, I’ll join. Wouldn’t it be nice to know that I spent say 99$ a month? As it turns out, all we ended up doing was using our 3rd phone for pictures, MP3, and calling Canada while on the road. We weren’t going to give anyone else a phone number for 6 months, and we already had Sprint, so all we ended up doing is splitting the minutes over 3 phones instead of 2. I’d bet that out of all the bloggers, our phone use was dead last.
The presumption of Sprint is that their design team and focus groups created a fantastic product, and it was up to us, the bloggers, to spread the word. But, the phone and sevice, while good of what I used, was not the fantastic product that was Sprint’s presumption. In short, they didn’t use bloggers on the right product/service. They could have used us bloggers as a focus group, and set up a forum for us to blast away. That didn’t happen. What should Sprint do? Recontact all us bloggers, invite us to a forum, and ask us the best way to use bloggers. Sprint’s method of throwing things out and seeing what sticks is an act of cluelessness. A study requires controls and identifiable parameters.
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