Sending the wrong message: Sprint's 'Injury' commerical

Ok. We get it. Fast network. Low monthly fees. But that's not the message here. There is something so fundamentally wrong with this commercial, I don't think the creatives who wrote this script ever thought about the deeper implications, or they didn't care.

The story that carries this commercial, is a very realistic one. Every season, quite a few professional athletes get seriously injured, and very often with career-ending injuries. There are tragic stories out there, and every once in a while we read about them. But the individual tragedy is not the subject matter here.

The underlying message implicit in this commercial is this: Although my profession is one that should be defined by helping others, by unselfishness, and by compassion, I don't give a damn. I am only acting selfishly, without caring about you at all whatsoever, only having my very own, personal benefit in mind.

The other few versions of this series are not as bad as this one, but they all carry the same message: I don't care about you. That's the takeaway for me from this series of Sprint commercials.

It is the same egotistic human behavior that made commuters on a San Francisco freeway scream "jump" at a suicide candidate, who had been blocking a bridge, from which he intended to jump, for three hours. It is the same self-centered thoughts we have when a co-worker gets laid off, and we crawl back to our cubicles not thinking about him or her, but about ourselves instead: Thank god not me. Better him than me. It is appaling. Definitely not the right message to wrap your cell phone services around.

Tomorrow will feature a commercial that does the exact opposite.