Dear CMO:
No time for a serious download right now, but I wanted to double check something with you. Did you see the Saints squeak past the Eagles tonight? Did you, as I did, look seriously at your eight year old son and say, "son, when you're up by 3 points with 3:40 left in the game, what don't you do? Right! You don't pitch the ball. You run the ball." Anyway.
In all the excitement, did I hear that Cingular is folding itself into the AT&T brand? What?
I understand that a lot of people know what AT&T is. That's like asking if people know who George Washington is. Sure, he's on the one dollar bill. And the quarter. How much did Cingular spend on building up "Jack", the logo and name?
"We did not enter that decision lightly," Wendy Clark, vice president of advertising at AT&T, said in an interview. "We came to understand that consumer customers and business customers alike are looking for a single provider. We heard it so consistently across the marketplace."
Here's a guess on my part, and I'm willing to debate this, but I seriously doubt that the mobile phone users of the world all see AT&T as a brand they aspire to. AT&T is a dinosaur. It's like GM without the sexiness. That was a joke, by the way.
But with its long and complicated history, AT&T may face customer confusion over its name, marketing experts said. Also, Cingular built up a reputation among younger customers who may not easily associate with the AT&T brand.
Brand awareness and brand equity are not the same thing. I can't believe AT&T is a brand your mobile phone core user would aspire to. This is a strange decision.
Regards.
Copyright (c) 2006 Stephen Denny
4 comments:
This just makes me go...huh? Maybe a battle over brand egos? Or maybe they held a focus group and validated that AT&T is the wireless carrier of choice :-).
Sigh.
This strikes me as one of two things --
First, "victor's justice", with ATT making the call to keep their own name.
Second, the backwards thinking of letting corporate customers who want consolidated billing dictate something they had no interest in dictating, namely brand direction. Go ahead, consolidate enterprise accounts how you wish -- but your customers, now and in the future, are saying what you're saying, namely "huh?"
AT&T, as a brand, has always (IMHO) been viewed as old, slow, tied to the past, and not "with it."
Yet, even more rigid SBC changed their name to that of the even slower moving AT&T.
How can we be surprised that AT&T would change Cingular to AT&T?
It's a culture thing. Dial tone. No net neutrality. Fiber to the home in 100 households and tout it as leading edge technology.
Nope, this is not surprising. This is right in character.
Which doesn't mean it's smart. Just in character.
Scot
AT&T's rebranding of Cingular is underway. Find some of the first online ads in this effort here -
Cingular Is Now The New AT&T (300x250)
What a mistake!
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