Either Gizmodo is pulling a CES-TV-Blackout caliber gag, or Sprint has done lost their iCloning minds:

Starting May 9th, Sprint will begin a massive, $100 million marketing campaign aimed straight at the iPhone’s nether regions. Stacking its 3G Instinct against the iPhone, Sprint hopes to show that EVDO and GPS make their product way better than anything coming out of Cupertino.

Wha-wha-wha-what?!

What will $100 million buy the Samsung Instinct? Ads. Ads that compare them spec-for-spec with last year’s iPhone…

Daring Fireball’s John Gruber sums it up well:

[I]t boggles the mind that Sprint is hanging a $100 million dollar advertising campaign on two features — GPS and EVDO networking — that the iPhone is widely-rumored to be picking up in its next-generation hardware. Worse, side-by-side, even in commercials commissioned by Sprint, the Instinct looks like crap next to an iPhone — the screen is way smaller and way less bright. What’s clear is that Sprint is run by MBA-trained executives who see everything as a general “business” problem. In their minds, the same things apply to selling phones as toothpaste. How about this idea: Take $100 million and use it to design a better phone?

What do you think?