Verizon Tells Alltel to Come Clean

Bernie — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 08:17:48 -0500

In a “sign of the times” legal claim, Verizon Wireless is suing Alltel for false advertising, claiming one of their famous “Chad” commercials is misleading. In the commercial, Alltel claims that VZW subscribers have to extend their contract when changing plans. A similar move with Alltel does not require extending a contract. Verizon is crying foul, saying since Oct. 1, 2007, VZW subscribers no longer have to extend contracts when changing plans. Only recently have some wireless carriers revisited that long standing industry wide practice of extending contracts. Many carriers still enforce such a rule. Among other remedies, VZW is demanding that Alltel stop the commercial campaign.

Lawsuit aside, you have to give it to Alltel for having the “gall” to take on their much larger wireless rivals. Alltel has always had somewhat of a “scrappy” mentality and doesn’t concede anything to their competitors.

Alltel Pushing Traditional Telecom Marketing Envelope

Bernie — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 10:50:34 -0400

Alltel has embraced Web 2.0 marketing methods, and appears to be seeing some success. Ad Week magazine examines some of Alltel’s web marketing strategies which includes MySpace pages and stand alone flash websites. The marketing campaigns feature Chad, Alltel’s fictional “cool” employee. Chad’s MySpace page quickly garnered 3,500 “friends” A stand alone flash website followed, centered on the ManCave, where bungling employees from Alltel’s competitors meet and plot how to defeat Chad.

Ad Week points out that much of the marketing throughout this entire web campaign is much more subtle than other similarly developed web campaigns. Nevertheless, Alltel’s Chad and corresponding ManCave strategy has built a solid following. Alltel admits that the promotion is a long term exercise and that the results from this strategy won’t be realized for some time. For right now, it’s a branding exercise. One that Alltel is quite pleased with, especially considering the costs are relatively low, when compared with more traditional media advertising and marketing tactics.