Sprint Nextel now just Sprint

Sprint Nextel today announced it would drop the “Nextel” from the name of the newly merged company and launch an aggressive nationwide rebranding campaign putting the Sprint name front and center.

The move has been expected as Sprint and Nextel before the acquisition said they planned to make the Sprint name the “master brand” of the new company--an umbrella term for the business and all services--while the Nextel name would be relegated to a product-specific brand, aimed at business and public sector customers using the company’s iDEN network.

The new mega-carrier said it is tonight overhauling 1600 retail stores with the new Sprint brand, featuring its new yellow color scheme a logo sporting an abstracted wing design and a new marketing tag line: the words “Yes you can.” Sprint will also take those themes to the airwaves and streets in a marketing and advertising campaign, including print and radio/TV advertisements, billboards and other outdoor placements as well as an online and direct-to-customer campaign. A statement issued by Sprint today promised “Sprint will be hard to miss in September and into the fourth quarter.”

Though Sprint and Nextel have billed their $36 million union as a merger, from financial, operational and public standpoints the deal resembles a direct acquisition. While the new Sprint is running both companies networks in parallel, the company is expected to phase in original Sprint’s CDMA technology as the networks evolve.