Selling Sprint’s Convergence Story

“Randy … your copy makes everything else fall into place.”

--Sprint CNS strategic communications manager

Abstractions are some of the hardest things to sell to a business audience. They’re not tangible benefits — as is, for example, saving time, money or lives. They’re also hard to get your hands around -- compared to, say, a computer that fits inside an inner-office envelope.

But isn’t that what “real” high-tech marketing is all about, especially at a strategic level? After all, a technology strategy is an abstraction, one that helps define a customer’s competitive advantage through its association with you.

Case in point: Sprint’s Converged Network Solutions. This is Sprint’s fastest growing business unit, with a 250% CAGR. It builds and manages mobility solutions that integrate cellular, Wi-Fi, paging, wireless telemetry, and public safety spectrum requirements with voice and data services integration across fixed and mobile platforms. The new CNS website is here.

How Sprint sells convergence on this site is itself a study in convergence -- of modern marketing communications methods -- specifically, Flash animation, narration, and text. To get the attention of senior decision makers, and also to position itself as a cutting edge player, Sprint built a “virtual city tour.” The city shows how convergence works in real applications customers can see. As the project’s copywriter, my job was to “stage” the narrative so its cadence and logic enabled exactly this type of presentation.

By the way, if you’d like the contact info for the designers or have other questions about this project, please drop me a line (there’s a form on my homepage).