Looks like Adidas-loving Sprint is having second thoughts about producing an attack ad against its Drake-loving competitor T-Mobile in which a woman calls the company "ghetto." The reality ad, which featured Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure talking to supposedly regular people about what came to their minds when he said "T-Mobile."
One woman's first thought was "ghetto." Which, whatever, that's one person who probably hasn't thought through the way that the word "ghetto" comes loaded with history and prejudice and a definite connotation that it's really just a coded term for black Americans. Again though, Sprint didn't have to use that footage. They were the ones shooting the video. But they did use it, as well as the footage of their CEO, Claure, a man worth $900 million, laughing at what the woman said. Then, as the Daily Dotpoints out, they slapped a big Sprint logo on it. They co-signed.
As you can imagine, people gave them hell on Twitter, where Claure had shared the video (he even taunted the @TMobile Twitter account by mentioning them in his tweet and writing "the truth hurts"). Today, the video has been removed, and Claure has apologized. Although, this is the Internet, so nothing is ever really gone forever.
Funny though, it looks like the joke might be on Sprint. As of the fourth quarter of 2015, T-Mobile had passed Sprint to become the fourth largest wireless carrier in the U.S., with 63.2 million subscribers, compared to Sprint's 57.9 million. Verizon and AT&T still have way more subscribers than either of them.
