I Don't Like The T-Mobile Girl Now That She's All Scowly

This has been eating away at me for some time, and now that I can't think up anything else to talk about, I'll blog about this now:

I have had T-Mobile all my life.  Check that ... when I was in El Paso I bought my first cellphone, through VoiceStream, which eventually was bought out by T-Mobile.  I know a lot of people complain about them, but I have totally been happy with them.  I think you get good service through T-Mobile in the Twin Cities area, I appreciate the lower price tiers compared to the other three big carriers, and I have never been hit with the service and customer service bugaboos others have with them.

But I do have a gripe about T-Mobile's spokesperson/mascot.  She's that beautiful woman (real name: Carly Foulkes) who landed the role in 2010.  You remember her in pink (actually, according to T-Mobile, it's magenta) summer dresses, a broad smile and chipper copy designed to push the product?  I do.  You think she's hot?  I think she's hot.





But other mean carriers, like Virgin Mobile, thought Carly ripe for parody.  I remember one commercial in 2011 (sorry, can't find it on YouTube and the one ad I wanted to use I couldn't embed from the non-YouTube site) made her look stupid and vapid.  If you remember the stand-in, I actually thought that rip-off looked like a taller Rachel Bilson.

Unfortunately, to me it seemed like T-Mobile reacted to the pot shots.  When they introduced their new 4G service a little bit after the send-up spots, they decided to dramatically change Carly's persona, from a happy waif to a badass:





I hate it.  I fucking hate it.  It's not like I'm going to drop T-Mobile because they changed their advertising strategy; I don't think I'm influenced by commercials at all.  But Old Carly was a perfectly inoffensive and cute spokeswoman, and it looks like the company thought that was bad.

To me, the New Carly is unapproachable, angry and kind of nasty.  It's like Old Carly decided to finally have sex with her boyfriend, and he took it a little too far -- pulling her hair, trying to stick his dick into her ass, not cuddling, shit like that -- and when he left her apartment, she got all confused, then cried the whole night for allowing it to happen, then immediately turned into a bitter, non-smiling bitch.  That's why she dropped the dress and shoved herself into that leather get-up in that "Alter Ego" ad.

And I really don't think this new direction helps T-Mobile, either.  So you now have this hot chick riding in a Ducati fast and flying around in a helicopter fast to show that their 4G is fast.  I have no idea if it truly is -- my God, I still use a flip phone -- but their new ad strategy looks like that of a lot of other products that uses speed, the night and aerial shots of big cities to show that their -- oh, cars or insurance policies or fracking methods or deodorant sticks -- are fast and the new thing and hot shit, basically.  Ridicule Old Carly and her Pollyannish disposition all you want.  At least that was unique.

I don't ever remember a company sticking with (let alone implementing) an ad campaign that radically changed their mascot like T-Mobile has.  If you're going to switch the tone and perception of your brand image from sunny to sleek, you might as well dump the mascot, too.  But they're not, and in my humble opinion, it's both a mistake and, well, really sad.

I think I would've liked Old Carly.  She seemed nice, yet sensible enough to pick the right cellphone carrier.