Sprint’s Facebook page: Social media messes the 4G message

Yesterday, I read an interesting little article at TheAtlantic.com, titled “5 Lessons from Social Media PR Disasters.”

Today, I experienced an additional example.

Browsing my Facebook news feed, I noticed an ad for Sprint 4G featuring the video embedded above, so I watched the video. The message could not be simpler, and this sort of Internet access is something I would be very interested in. I have semi-lusted after MiFi, but I don’t think it has quite enough speed yet.

So Sprint’s commercial ends, and some clicking choices are presented, one of which is “Learn More”. I click that, and am taken to Sprint’s Facebook Page, where their wall shows me all sorts of random posts — including things like this:

Spring is full of ____. 4G is not available in the US. 3G LTE (long term evolution) aka 3.5G is what they call 4G. Lying pieces of ____ trying to peddle you their crap.

SPRINT IS THE BIGGEST PIECE OF ____ COMPANY I HAVE EVER COME ACROSS, I HAVE HAD 10 TOUCH PROS AND 3 TOUCH PRO TWOS ALREADY, HTC IS GARBAGE AND SO IS SPRINT

My text messages from some of my friends seem to get delayed by about five minutes before I get them. Anyone else have this problem?

Dear friends, I’m trying to promote my iphone/ipod touch game ANEURYSM. If you could take a second to check it out, that would be cool. If not, it’s cool.

So Sprint spends the advertising money to make the spot with Gene Shalit. They spend more advertising money to post it on Facebook and get my attention. But then they ultimately deposit me on a Facebook page cluttered with random and negative messages which do nothing to shepherd my interest in 4G.

Facebook pages are fine and all, but they can be a lot of work to manage. I have to think the ad would be more effective if “Learn More” linked instead to a well-designed landing page.