• by Nina Lentini  @Nina_Lentini, April 6, 2009

Seeking to make an impact among cell phone users who are looking to save money and among those who are data-driven, Sprint is launching two new campaigns.

One debuted during Monday night's "24" on Fox, where Sprint has already created a relationship, according to Mike Goff, VP of national advertising for Overland Park, Kan.-based Sprint.

"We felt strongly that we needed to put some investment behind our positioning, to define what the 'Now Network' is all about," he tells Marketing Daily. Based on the viral success of Sprint's online widget, the company decided to bring the idea to life on TV.

In the ad, viewers learn such esoteric facts as how many tons of eggs are being laid right now, how many people are researching restaurants from a cab (and that 29 of them will leave those phones in said cabs), how many bicycles are being built and that 1,041,667 emails are en route.

Goff says the creative was designed to get people to think "in a compelling way about what's going on now. We want to change the dialog of how people think about the network they use and whether there's voice, text or email or GPS. Right now, they're conditioned to hearing about dropped calls, coverage and reliability."

The "What's Happening Now?" brand-focused ads will also appear in select print nationwide as well as on a microsite, in banner ads and several home page takeovers on YouTube, Yahoo, MSN, and AOL. The first home page takeover launches April 29 with others to follow. There also will be digital billboards in high-traffic areas later this year.

In the value piece, the notion that Spring is trying to plant in consumers' minds, Goff says, is that "you're crazy not to switch to us." Those ads focus on humorous and unlikely ways that people waste money -- for example, dumping a wheelbarrow full of quarters into a fountain.

Those ads as well as the Now Network series will appear in a mix of prime cable and broadcast.