Bob CollinsIf you spend any time at all watching commercial TV, perhaps you’ve marveled at the notion that some people get up and go to work in the morning and sit in meetings and come up with the most inane ideas to turn into a product commercial.
Someone got up one morning, went to work, and thought this was good idea.
It’s unlikely anyone will get punished for the racial undertones in the add. T-Mobile’s Sprint’s CEO — Marcelo Claure — is in the ad.
He asks real Sprint users what they think about T-Mobile.
A customer, a white woman, immediately replies, “Oh, my God, the first word that came to my mind was… ‘ghetto!'”
The pushback was instantaneous, and so was the quick lesson in how not to handle the early smoke from a public relations dumpster fire.
Honest answers from real people on my #ListeningTour across the country. Sometimes the truth hurts, @TMobile https://t.co/4WHoDLNsbj
— MarceloClaure (@marceloclaure) April 12, 2016
In a later tweet he said the ad wasn’t meant to offend anyone.
A few hours later, he pulled the ad.
My job is to listen to consumers. Our point was to share customer views. Bad judgment on our part. Apologies. Taking the video down.
— MarceloClaure (@marceloclaure) April 13, 2016
The ad stems from a “listening tour” that Claure is conducting. This ad was filmed at his stop in Seattle.
