Filed under: Funny, Gripes, Online, Print, Radio, Television, Ads We Hate, Wireless, Campaign Launch, Op-ed
For some time now, we've been hearing rumors that "the new at&t" would be changing the name of its wireless carrier, which is currently Cingular, but contains part of the old debacle AT&T Wireless, to at&t. Whether or not they are going to make it lower case or not isn't the issue here, it's the fact that they're changing Cingular's name at all. The amount of money that was spent to not only build the infrastructure and the customer base that it currently has, and have it be a "new" company (I've been a customer almost a decade, from when it was Cellular One in New Jersey) rather than an old world one that just happens to have bought its way into the future has to be staggering, but they for some reason feel the need to, now that the megaconglomerate with a lot less employees than it had before the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and the divestiture of Ma Bell has sort of reformed itself. I'm not really sure what the point of it is, unless you really think that people are going to harken back to the olden days of yore (ten plus years ago) when good old AT&T was providing them with phone service at home, or maybe back to the 70s and 80s when you had a nice rotary phone that weighed a ton and you rented from the phone company. What, rented a phone? Wow, and we think that today's terms and conditions are out of control.
On Wednesday, Engadget's Ryan Block mentioned that the company was looking to have the rebranding in place by the time that the Apple iPhone was released, so we're talking June-time here. Aside from the fact that a rebrand may leave Jeff Burton's #31 Chevrolet without a sponsor, potentially, why are they just flipping the switch over to a name that isn't relevant to the younger generation in this company, except for when they are reading about technology? Kids these days don't have at&t products, unless they're (now) Cingular customers or happen to have DSL at home that's brought together by them. The only reason that the next generation is going to "know" at&t is because they bought their way into their lives and changed the names (back and forth) from a ton of companies that they sort of owned in the first place, but willingly changed the names of when the companies split up. I understand the value of speaking in "one voice" to your customers, and maybe that works with bringing in new ones, but what about your existing ones who actually like what Cingular is about, think the jack is a cool logo, like the orange and black colors, and so on and so forth? If investments such as that are waste-able (which is what is going on here) then why bother being creative at all? Why don't we just go back and call everything what it originally was, just so we can make a connection with people who aren't going to be your core customers for the next two decades? I think if A&P will change it's name back to The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company, I'd definitely shop there more often. Not. Bell Atlantic changing its name to Verizon (say what you want about the name) actually made sense because the company wasn't just Bell Atlantic anymore. Cingular changing its name "back" to at&t is pure vanity.
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