VzW ‘Asked’ to Pull Push-to-Talk Ad

Admit it: you might have chuckled at the fact they make fun of chunky push-to-talk phones in holsters (holsters! Now that’s funny, like pocket protectors, and beepers). But not everyone is amused by Verizon Wireless’s new PTT ad campaign. In fact, the National Advertising Division of the Council of Better Business Bureaus has recommended the carrier pull them.

At issue is the fact that it’s obviously Sprint-Nextel Corp.’s iDEN-based push-to-talk service that the ads are targeting, and both Sprint and the NAD have found the campaign to be misleading to the public, who might take away the notion that Sprint is shutting down or disconnecting service, or that it’s losing most of its customers.

One problematic line from the ad: “We all upgraded to Verizon Wireless. Got push-to-talk and the reliability of the network. That old service is useless now.”

The laws governing commercial speech are thorny but it doesn’t seem Verizon is in lawsuit territory, considering the NAD merely recommended, rather than demanded, that Verizon pull the ads. One could say it’s Sprint taking an unlikely scenario to a heightened conclusion in a competitive snit. Or, one could say Verizon is deliberately clouding the issue.

And we thought this kind of thing was over after Election Day.

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