T-Mobile Advertising

The four main cell phone companies in the United States, Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint, and AT&T, have long competed against each other for customers. Verizon is the company who first featured “colorful balls” in their ads to show how they tested against their competitors. Since then, Sprint has released one commercial and T-Mobile has done three commercials rebutting Verizon’s original one. In 2013, T-Mobile launched their “UN-carrier” marketing movement, which changed the face of mobile phone plans. The latest T-Mobile ad, titled “Ballogize” and starring Steve Harvey, is a continuation of this movement. Steve Harvey’s presence in this commercial shows that he is capable of poking fun at himself for his recent Miss Universe mistake. T-Mobile’s
Each group of balls have a specific color that relate back to their designated company. The red balls match with Verizon; the blue ones represent AT&T; the yellow ones mean Sprint; the pink ones stand for T-Mobile. Those four colors were chosen because the audience can easily associate them back to the four different companies. When Steve Harvey mentions how T-Mobile increased their coverage, bright pink balls begin to flow in massive numbers to signify how much their company has grown. The balls continue until they are falling off the edges of the track onto the floor, even covering Steve Harvey’s shoes. Any yellow, blue, or red balls that were on the track beforehand have now been covered by the numerous pink balls. This can translate to mean that T-Mobile has swallowed up all the other competition. It could also be seen as a foreshadow of T-Mobile becoming so popular that it results in Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint becoming obsolete and
For this ad, the hashtag happened to be the title of the ad, “Ballogize”. The typical goal of marketing is to get a great deal of publicity and by using hashtags for social media, the chatter is considerably more. Hashtags help to keep the conversation about the topic going, which in turn, results in the topic getting more publicity than just the commercial by itself. Because T-Mobile’s commercial aired during the Super Bowl, there was already a large amount of people exposed to the hashtag at the ending. By using the hashtag on social media platforms, people are able to leave their commentary as well as spark the curiosity of somebody who has not seen the ad. They can then figure out the origin of the hashtag and view the commercial. Business people have learned to use social media to their advantage, and having a hashtag that relates back to a company's topic is just one