Sprint awards ad work to Goodby, Silverstein

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Sprint Nextel Corp. (S.N) has shifted its advertising account to Omnicom Group Inc.'s (OMC.N) Goodby, Silverstein & Partners as part of a move to market its wireless service more aggressively.

Sprint, the No. 3 U.S. wireless service, has been locked in a battle for customers with Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ.N) and AT&T Inc. (T.N) and earlier this year put its advertising business up for review.

Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, a San Francisco-based agency, has won the account, a Sprint spokeswoman said on Monday.

The company had been working with Omnicom's TBWA/Chiat/Day and Publicis & Hal Riney, a unit of Publicis (PUBP.PA).

Sprint lost market share to rivals as it grappled with network problems, struggled to weed out low-value customers and integrated its purchase of Nextel Communications in 2005.

Analysts have also criticized Sprint's marketing message for being confusing due to its use of both the Nextel and Sprint brands, and the lack of a clear message.

AT&T's Cingular, for instance, touts itself as the carrier with "the fewest dropped calls of any network," while Verizon has played up reliability with its "We never stop working for you" slogan.