You just can't keep a good pitchman down.
Sprint has launched a new ad campaign featuring the Paul Marcarelli,??? ????? ?????? ??? ???????? better known as the "can you hear me now?" guy from Verizon.
The new ad spots debuted Sunday night during Game 2 of the NBA Finals and featured Marcarelli as himself instead of his previous character.
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Here's Marcarelli's new ad spot. Stay to the end for a riff on his old catchphrase.
In a press release that is of undetermined sarcasm, Sprint claimed that recruiting Marcarelli showed that "today demonstrated that its fastest and most reliable network ever can lure away even the most iconic people in wireless."
Verizon's "can you hear me now" campaign became one of the most iconic ad catchphrases and launched Marcarelli into a unique kind of stardom.
Also, apropos of nothing, Marcarelli's Twitter account is almost entirely pictures of his pugs.
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Verizon, when reached for comment by Time, threw back some pretty decent shade.
"They're using our 2002 pitchman because they're finally catching up to where we were in 2002. Of course since then, we've spent billions of dollars -- $11 billion last year alone -- improving and expanding America's best wireless network," Verizon spokesperson Jeffrey Nelson said.
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