Remember Verizon’s “Can you hear me now?” commercials? They featured a bespectacled network tester asking “Can you hear me now?” in various locations to show the reach of Verizon’s network, and both the phrase and the tester became extremely well-known. Years later, the tester is back, but he’s hawking a different network.
Paul Marcarelli, the name of the actor that played Verizon’s Test Man in all of those old ads, is now appearing in commercials for Sprint. Sprint debuted the ads during tonight’s NBA Finals game, with the main ad touting a Nielsen study that said that Sprint’s network reliability is within one percent of Verizon’s.
In addition to the main 30-second ad, Sprint has tapped Paul Marcarelli for a few other clips. For example, one of them demonstrates Sprint’s Direct 2 You setup service with Paul at an outdoor cafe.
Verizon’s Test Man ads with the phrase “Can you hear me now?” are some of the best-known wireless commercials, so Sprint’s ads featuring Test Man Paul Marcarelli are sure to get folks talking. And following the recent video posted by Sprint that included a focus group member calling T-Mobile “ghetto,” Sprint is probably happy to see folks talking about its move to bring a well-known Verizon spokesman onto the big yellow network.