Sprint today announced that it has hired former BellSouth veteran Keith Cowan to head up planning and new initiatives for the company as well as plans a new marketing campaign to infuse life back into Sprint’s brand.

Effective July 9, Cowan will take the new mantle of president of strategic planning and corporate initiatives where he will oversee all of Sprint’s new strategic projects, including the new WiMAX network and the Pivot cable joint venture. Cowan will report directly to chairman and CEO Gary Forsee, and reporting to Cowan will be Barry West, chief technology officer and president of the 4G venture; Jack Dziack, senior vice president of strategy and the new president of the cable solutions, which oversees Pivot.

The current president of Pivot, John Garcia, is being promoted to senior vice president of product management. Vice president of cable solutions Jim Patterson will take over as acting president.

On July 1, Sprint will launch a new marketing campaign called “Sprint Ahead,” which will focus on the technological advantages of Sprint’s network. While this approach is not too different from its previous campaigns, Sprint said it will focus on one particular aspect of the network where it believes it excels: speed. The campaign won’t just focus on network data speeds, but the speed of many of its services such as instantaneous push-to-talk on the Nextel network.

“Beginning in a few days, Sprint will move ahead of its competitors, who continue to harp on the industry’s shortcomings such as dropped calls, minutes and pricing plans,” chief marketing officer Tim Kelly said in a statement. “Instead of ignoring all of the amazing things people do with their mobile devices, Sprint’s new approach to the market embraces the awesome ways our innovative technology adds real value to the lives of our customers.”

Sprint will kick off the campaign with two television ads, one targeted at consumers and the other at business, as well as print ads and outdoor advertising.