Here is a response from Dish Network to a customer’s letter complaining about the language in their short-lived “suck free TV” campaign. Not surprisingly, we don’t agree with their rationale and had a good chuckle at their attempt to respond, but, hey, we’ll share the whole letter here without further comment so you can draw your own conclusions.

Dear Sir or Madam,

Thanks for your note regarding the new ads....we've had a lot of feedback.

As you may know, we operate in a cluttered ad environment. Some of our most liked ads do not generate sales or retention for us as they are not memorable. We strive to achieve maximum 'call to action' effectiveness, i.e., to drive cable subscribers to act on something they largely already know but are too stuck (inertia) in the status quo to make a move on.

In our current (TV sucks) and previous campaigns (cable pigs), we drew fire from some groups for the aggressive way we portray cable (...as Pigs snorting through your wallet in search of your cash or in the most recent case, as a TV set sucking the cash out of your purse and the food right off your table!). Our follow-up ads will be more specific in that we will actually show the exact amount of money a digital cable household spends in excess of what a superior service costs from DISH. Customers are so used to seeing monetary comparisons, they will tune this out unless they are pre conditioned to watch because they see the ad as a clear follow-on to the first one - assuming the first one caught and kept their attention.

We do not actually think cable execs are pigs, nor do we think their service literally sucks cash and other objects into the cable vortex...but the sucking and pigginess aspects of our depiction of their behavior/strategies help us capture the market's attention and memorably reinforce a known rationale for cable subscribers to switch....cable costs a lot more and offers a lot less. That said, we do not condone the use of the words pig or sucks in their standalone pejorative use - and strive to use 'sucks' in particular in the context of the TV actually 'sucking' all things in it's path.

Thus far, the ads are driving the hoped for sales volume and 97% of the media and industry feedback has been positive. That does not mean the current ad satisfies all customers - but we've never had an ad that did.

We would be interested in hearing from you again as the next round (the follow-on) of ads come out which move from the "accusation" stage to the "specific charge" stage of our campaign.

We hope it will reinforce for you that you and nearly 12 million other Dish subscribers are saving a vast amount of money while enjoying a truly superior TV experience.

Sincerely

Michael Neuman
President
EchoStar Satellite L.L.C.