OVERLAND PARK, Kan., Dec 01, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Sprint (NYSE:S) is giving customers the gift of value this holiday season with six power-packed devices offered free with a two-year contract for a limited time only exclusively through Sprint.com. Sprint customers already enjoy the best savings in wireless service today - for families, that can mean at least $240 and up to $1,000 in annual savings based on comparable rate and service plans offered by Verizon and AT&T. Read More ...

NEW YORK - First there was the "staycation" as Americans saved gas money by staying close to home for vacation. Now families are opting for "home enterstayment" - watching movies and shows at home -- rather than an expensive night out. With new promotional offers and more high-definition programming from Verizon FiOS TV, cost-cutting families don't have to sacrifice quality or limit their entertainment choices while saving money by staying home. Read More ...

Time Warner Cable (TWC) is looking to take a page from Britney Spears and Paris Hilton with a new viral video marketing strategy called Fame Star. The new marketing strategy allows customers to create fictional biopic videos of themselves, chronicling their rise to fame, and subsequent fall. It’s a play on the Hollywood pop culture scene, represented by popular tabloid “journalism” outlets like Access Hollywood and People Magazine. Users can create their own videos and share them with friends and family. TWC is hoping for a huge “viral” hit that could potentially reach millions of consumers. TWC products and brands are referenced throughout each video. There are also direct marketing tools on the Fame Star site, including TWC comparisons to Verizon FiOS and AT&T U-verse.

It’s an interesting strategy – one that is representative of the times. Service providers are constantly evaluating and executing strategies that try to leverage web 2.0 and the “long tail” phenomena, with mixed success. It’s no secret that reaching consumers through traditional marketing and media buys is increasingly difficult. When viral campaigns catch fire, they can reach millions at a fraction of the cost of traditional media outreach. The truly successful ones are few and far between. Give TWC credit for trying. As the famous hockey player Wayne Gretzky said, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”

Verizon is slowly making their way through New York City and meeting their cable competitors head on. Time Warner Cable and Cablevision share various parts of New York City and its 8 million potential subscribers. Cablevision has more experience in battling Verizon, having tangled with them in various New York suburbs. They’re meeting the FiOS challenge quite nicely. It will be interesting to see if they can repeat their suburban success in the city. Bloomberg News highlights this pitched battle in a revealing article. Verizon is using a variety of marketing tactics to build market share, including barbeques in New York’s boroughs and potato chip and soda parties in Manhattan skyscraper lobbies. On a good night, they’re getting 30 subscribers a building to churn over to FiOS. Well, at least until DOCSIS 3.0 shows up anyway.

Comcast COO Steve Burke says the way to counter competition from telcoTV competitors is to put “feet on the street” and get local. Burke made the comments at the Merrill Lynch 2008 Media Fall Preview in Marina Del Rey, Ca. Burke is talking about getting back to cable TV sales and marketing basics – knocking on doors and taking names. According to Burke, it’s working. “In places where we’re competing against FiOS, we’re doing better this year than we were last year or the year before,” he said.

Cable, more so than telco has a long legacy with knocking on doors. I can remember some decades ago, when the cable man showed up at our door. He was an excellent salesman because he managed to co-opt my brother and I into the sales process. There we were, the three of us trying to convince my mother how desperately we needed that 30 channel package. After all, what household in the early eighties could get along without HBO? She respectfully declined. But it didn’t last long – she eventually gave in. The moral of the story – feet on the street banging on doors works. And cable has much more experience at it than telco. Is this tried and proven sales strategy behind telco's DSL losses last quarter?

You know the competitive landscape is quite mature when competitors resort to blimps. That’s just what’s happening between DirecTV and its central Florida cable competitors. It all revolves around the cantankerous issue of the NFL Network. The NFL Network is battling cable companies to get carriage on their basic tiers. Many cable companies are resisting, and putting NFL Network on a digital or “sports” tier. Others, including Time Warner Cable don’t offer NFL Network at all. As a result, millions of cable subscribers can’t watch NFL Games on the NFL Network. DirectTV, Verizon FiOS, and other cable competitors are seizing on this issue to build competitive advantage, by offering NFL Network on less restrictive tiers. DirecTV is trying to exploit this advantage, thus the blimp.

DirecTV will be flying their Starship blimp over the Tampa/St. Petersburg market during tonight’s Denver Broncos/Houston Texans game, and displaying the actual game on the blimp’s 2,100-square foot video display. People from the ground will be able to watch the actual game on the blimp. DirecTV is taking aim at Brighthouse Networks, the local cable MSO, which does not carry NFL Network. DirecTV will continue the blimp tactic across central Florida, including Orlando, for the next few NFL Network game broadcasts. There is no end in sight for this dispute. Even Senator John Kerry has offered to try to mediate. I guess our nation’s many problems will need to take a back seat as the Senator resolves the ultra important issue of who gets to watch the game tonight.

Taking a page from the home makeover reality show craze, Verizon will be producing a digital home makeover television series. The series will be called My Home 2.0 (is it just me, or is 2.0 being way over used?), and will feature their FiOS product line. The initial series will originate in Comcast’s home turf of Philadelphia. An unlikely coincidence.

This latest marketing move illustrates the maturation process of telecom marketing. Telecom has never been known for its marketing innovation, so in some regard, its quite revealing to see a company like Verizon try something different like this. Digital home makeover "infomercials" are about as far away from bill stuffers as you can get. As the battleground between cable and telecom intensifies, expect to see more marketing maturation on both sides. No word on where the series will be shown.

In a clever spin on the numerous ‘erectile dysfunction’ pharmaceutical marketing campaigns, Sprint has launched a flashy marketing campaign called Connectile Dysfunction (CD). The CD campaign is fully integrated with print, television, and now web and promotes their broadband wireless offerings. They’ve recently launched www.cureCD.com, a video flash enabled website.