By Ryan Knutson
Sprint Corp.'s new Chief Executive Marcelo Claure is shuffling
top executives as he tries to turn around the nation's struggling,
third-place wireless carrier.
"It's often said that the people are the greatest asset of a
company. I disagree," Mr. Claure wrote in the memo distributed to
Sprint employees last week. "The right people are the most
important asset."
In the memo, Mr. Claure named the more than two dozen executives
who are part of his core leadership team and announced two new
positions of chief experience officer and chief procurement
officer. He also said three senior Sprint executives including Jeff
Hallock, Sprint's chief marketing officer who oversaw Sprint's
"Framily" marketing campaign, would be departing.
Sprint Chairman Masayoshi Son installed Mr. Claure as CEO in
August to fix Sprint, which is trying to reverse years of losing
money and customers. The carrier has been dogged by a network whose
quality is worse than its rivals' and cellphone pricing plans that
Mr. Claure has called confusing. In the recent quarter, Sprint lost
336,000 of the industry's most lucrative customers, more than any
of the big four U.S. carriers.
Mr. Claure came in after Mr. Son dropped his pursuit to acquire
smaller rival T-Mobile US Inc. And in his first three months on the
job, Mr. Claure has been busy. Sprint launched new pricing plans
and scrapped its "Framily" marketing campaign. The carrier also
said recently it was letting go of about 2,000 employees and
creating new executive level positions.
In the memo, Mr. Claure said he was appointing Sprint executive
Bob Johnson to the newly created position of chief experience
officer to improve customer service, and hired Frank Boyer, an
outside consultant, as chief procurement officer.
Mr. Boyer will "oversee our efforts to evaluate where we spend
every dollar and look for ways to improve our cost structure," Mr.
Claure said.
On Monday, Sprint said it was bringing in Douglas Michelman,
former head of corporate communications for Visa Inc., as senior
vice president of corporate communications to replace Bill White
who will leave the carrier at the end of the year.
Matt Carter, head of Sprint's enterprise business is also
departing the company, according to Mr. Claure's memo.
Sprint's "Framily" marketing campaign, which was headed up by
the outgoing Mr. Hallock, was one of the first initiatives Mr.
Claure cut when taking over. The offer reduced a customer's bill
when more people were added to the wireless plan.
Sprint's new strategy mimics the shareable data plans offered by
AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Corp., but Sprint offers
more data at a cheaper price.
At an investor conference last week, Mr. Claure said Sprint
would soon launch an aggressive marketing campaign that would
emphasize the idea that Sprint is the lowest cost wireless
provider.
"I can tell you that you ain't seen nothing yet," Mr. Claure
said of their coming ad campaign. "We are going to make it a very
clear point...we are going to be the leader in pricing."
Over the weekend, Sprint released a new commercial featuring a
goat, meant to represent AT&T and Verizon, that screams when it
learns of how cheap Sprint's cellphone plans are.
Meanwhile, Mr. Claure said last week that Sprint would be
looking to hire talented people from across the globe.
"You're going to be surprised in the next 60 to 90 days that
talent, the caliber of talent that we're attracting to Sprint," he
said. "I'm assembling a team of people that have done this before
that are world-class leaders that have decided to come and join
us."
Earlier this month, Sprint said Nikesh Arora, a former Google
executive recently hired at SoftBank, was joining Sprint's
board.
Last month, Sprint brought in Junichi Miyakawa from Sprint's
owner, SoftBank, into a newly created position of Technical Chief
Operating Officer. Mr. Miyakawa will relocate to Sprint's
headquarters in Kansas from Japan and oversee the company's current
network chiefs John Saw and Stephen Bye.
Mr. Claure also announced the creation of a unit that will focus
on the rapidly growing minority segments of the U.S. population,
and is seeking someone to lead the group, according to the
memo.
Write to Ryan Knutson at ryan.knutson@wsj.com
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