• by Emily Burg , September 22, 2006

Alltel Wireless' fully integrated ad campaign for My Circle, its exclusive calling network feature, uses the tagline "come and get your love." But the Little Rock, Ark.-based wireless provider isn't showing any love to competitors Verizon, Sprint Nextel, Cingular and T-Mobile, all of whom are represented in TV spots and Webisodes by geeky sales guys in polo shirts corresponding to the colors of their brand logos.

The campaign, called "Sales Guys," was created by Campbell-Ewald of Detroit, and will include traditional TV, radio and print ads, as well as event marketing, Hispanic advertising and interactive elements on the My Circle Web site. Alltel is not revealing how much it is spending on the campaign.

The first TV spot, also posted on the Web site, is called "Food Court." In it, the sales guys--representatives of Alltel's wireless competitors--sit around a mall food court debating strategies for stopping the spread of My Circle. They use cleverly written arguments that decry features of their own networks' calling plans to criticize My Circle, which lets customers place unlimited calls to any 10 numbers on any U.S. network at any time of day.

The ad will air nationally on cable networks including MTV and ESPN, on Univision, and on more than 350 local affiliates.

In the ad, Chad is Alltel's cool proponent, with spiky blond hair and blue eyes, and sporting a bright blue button-down shirt. He appears in four Webisodes in which he tries to meet with execs at the offices of his four competitors to sell them on My Circle's virtues, but fails to get face time with any of them. Chad also has his own MySpace page.

The previous ad campaign for Alltel was equally creative, including characters such as Edward Maxwell Von Houten, president of the fictional People Against My Circle Foundation (PAMCF), which also has its own Web site. That links through to the Web site supportmycircle.com, which tracks the iterations of "This Century's Trial of the Century," during which Von Houten initiated a class action suit against Chad, claiming that no one should be forced into a circle against their will.

Alltel also will leverage its sponsorship assets with four NFL teams and 12 partner universities for a separate My Circle campaign in which college football personality Lee Corso runs a contest for which the prize is a college football game named in the winner's honor.

Alltel customers also can add the NFL's four top wide receivers to their My Circle network under the promotion, and microsites dedicated to each player are hosted on the My Circle Web site.