Wednesday, January 04, 2006

I've Seen This New AT&T Before, Haven't I?

Did you watch last night's Rose Bowl, read this morning's Wall Street Journal, or listened to ESPN Sports Radio yesterday? Well I did and I couldn't help but be bombarded with AT&T's new advertising campaign. As reported in Media Daily News, the new campaign themed Your World, Delivered is supposed to be the biggest of either of the two previously stand-along telecom giants, The Old AT&T and SBC. According to the article, the campaign is valued at $100 million for 2006.

Yes, I worked at AT&T for 10 years and I loved my time there and I still have my long distance with them. Heck, I was happy to see that two of my calling plans that I launched are still active. However, $100 million to launch a branding campaign seems like an awful lot of money. Do the current ads talk about new products or calling plans? No. It announces that SBC and AT&T joined forces to form the New AT&T.

As I recall, AT&T still has huge brand awareness and telling people SBC is now part of it seems like a waste of money. Couldn't the powers that be have spent a chunk of that money on fighting Vonage in VOIP. How about entering the internet space for acquiring customers? I did seem some New AT&T online ads, but they had no call to action and were black and white. Here's another idea. How about saving the money for the inevitable branding of Cingular back to AT&T Wireless?

The Old AT&T used to launch big campaigns to move the needle especially when it came to acquiring customers. Remember the iPlan; I still don't know what that was, but I remember it. How about Beaches which showed a woman working on the beach with her cell phone? That was a great ad. However, the Old AT&T stopped those big monolithic campaigns and started focusing on direct marketing and product specific advertising. That seems like a more modern strategy.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

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