mingkee

T-Mobile USA Inc.'s chief marketing officer, Mike Butler, has resigned.

A spokesman for the wireless carrier said Butler was in route to the T-Mobile USA-sponsored NBA All Star Game in Las Vegas and could not be reached immediately for comment. The spokesman declined to discuss the reasons for Butler's departure. He said a successor has not been named.

"Mike Butler is leaving T-Mobile and his creative horsepower will be missed," said T-Mobile USA in a statement. "Mike's contribution and leadership in building a strong national brand has been instrumental in driving our rapid growth and

establishing our most recent new positioning behind 'Stick Together.'"

T-Mobile USA said Robert Dotson, the carrier's CEO, will take over the "chief brand officer" position.

Butler inherited Catherine Zeta-Jones as a celebrity spokeswoman when he joined the company in January 2004. The carrier parted with Zeta-Jones in September 2006, a move that coincided with the introduction of the carrier's new "stick together" tagline. The tagline replaced its previous "get more" line.

T-Mobile USA's most recent move in the U.S. wireless market was the introduction of its My Faves plan, which allows unlimited calling to any five phone numbers. Alltel Corp. offers a simialr service to 10 numbers.

T-Mobile spent $522 million in 2005 and $405 million in measured media for the first nine months of 2006, according to TNS Media Intelligence; its agency is Publicis in the West, Seattle.

Alice Z. Cuneo is a reporter for AdAge, a sister pubcliation of RCR Wireless News. Both publications are owned by Crain Communications Inc.

T-Mobile USA marketing chief resigns :: RCR Wireless News

Nwahs

hmmmm I wonder why? T-mobile's ads are funny, but I like how the Verizon ads make them seem so solid and good...T-mobile seems cheaper. I guess we'll have to wait and see.

Scoot

it will be interesting how the ads will be now.

Nwahs

I hope they steer a little more away from the funny stuff and toward making T-mobile seeming more reliable, and maybe they can compare plan prices to other carriers. I guess we'll have to see.

arigold

Perhaps they went to stay away from the dryness of the marketing of say Verizon or Cingular. While Verizon ads certainly convey the appropriate message, the ads for the chocolate and such don't do much for me. I think T-mobile needs to stay on their current track and let the hilarity of the commercial sell the product.

brad15

dry does not even cover the Verizon ads. they are all basically the same (just like the phones)..

i dont even bother getting a high end phone for my vzw line anymore, because they all act the same. My Samsung a870 has exactly the same functions as my v3m (as far as the menu is concerned), the only thing i dont have now is Video recording, but the nokia 6133 beats the v3m in all aspects of the camera anyways..

Nwahs

One thing I wish they did, would be to take maybe 1/2 the advertising budget, and spend it on getting better coverage inside buildings. A great way to "advertise" and make T-mobile look good, is to have your friends with a Verizon and Cingular phone say, anyone have a signal in here? and you can just respond "Ya T-mobile does"
If I ever get to do that (which is rarely) I usually get "dang T-mobiles good" and that usually ends up in a conversation on how I get service there, plus pay $20 less a month then they all do...

Anyways, I think if they made the ads a little more...not cheap looking at the end, but still do the funny thing, that would work well.

brad15

i have had it happen a few times. where cingular does not work, and verizon is extremely weak and i got a very usable signal.

arigold

I was at one our of monthly trainings yesterday and T-mobile again emphasized that one of its goals for this year is to improve the "in-home" coverage. What I got out of this was that they want to drastically improve the word of mouth coverage for users inside the home. They want the personal coverage check to really come into play in every sale so they can reduce churn by having the reps show the true image of what the service might look like. They also asked if we could report areas that customers were complaining about, areas where we had people coming in to activate but the pcc showed low signal.

I think T-mobile management is well aware of the coverage limitations vs the other larger carriers and while they want to improve coverage across the board, I think for now suburban improvement is their main focus.

Nwahs

:D :D
Thats what I like to hear. Thats why I love T-mobile! Great company. Hopefully it works. I don't know what happened, but starting 3 weeks ago, I started to get signal in my house in places where I usually didn't...and my signal everywhere around my house went up 2 or 3 bars. It was great! Looks like its working some at least

arigold

There was some serious emphasis during the week long training about how T-mobile really wants to make a suburban push. I'm not quite sure how they define suburban but since there is no bad thing as a bad improvement I can only sit and hope that they increase coverage enough to draw more and more customers away. I heard a lot of mixed emotions about T-mobile in Chicago's north suburbs and I have had NOTHING but good success. I only know one place that my phone doesn't work and its a book-store so I don't want to want to use the phone anyway.

I'm looking forward to the future.

chokaay

I sure as heck hope you're right. I don't get THAT many problems indoors in SoCal, but the signal DOES fluctuate significantly indoor vs. outdoor and it does happen from time-to-time (especially for RAZR or poor RF phone users... and you KNOW there are a ton of us!). I just hope they do this SOONER than LATER! The other day I actually had a SPLIT-SECOND THOUGHT about the mere possibility of going over to Cingular because of this very reason... but then regained my sanity shortly thereafter. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE T-mo... DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS (SOON)!!! :( :o

mingkee

too bad T-Mobile is so-so in my home area
almost no signal in basement area, repeater required
and recently I encounter voice transmission problem, that other side can't hear mine, reported to CS
and see some relatives are about to change to AT&T
too bad.....:(

brad15

i really dont have any issues inside buildings. Just inside the locker rooms at the ice rink (and my 6030 works in most of those too).. i am not in the locker room to talk on the phone though, so it does not matter to me.