Leftovers
My Name Is AT&T (Maybe, Sorta, Possibly)
The consummate name game is unfolding on your TV screen as we type.
In 2005, SBC Communications bought AT&T, creating a company that reminds us those old enough to remember of Ma Bell. Then last year, AT&T finally got approval to take over BellSouth and changed its name to AT&T. AT&T did not, however, change the name of Cingular, now under its sole control, at the same time, but did the name-change-dance on January 15th. The branding geniuses (lightly used) from AT&T have forgotten how much AT&T was hated as a wireless company just a few years ago.
We get name recognition as well as the next marketer. But here we go…
Cingular, with their odd little orange man-shaped logo, grew to become not only a well recognized name—even if the idea of singular or analog in a digital world was comical—and a connector to youth culture, but a quality performer in a marketplace where “cell phone companies” are hated, period.
AT&T on the other hand was recognized in its previous incarnation as downright clueless when it came to wireless. (They were the phone company, quote unquote, and took their sweet time grabbing hold of the new non-tethered space).
People cringed in the 90’s when encountering someone who’d been guileless enough to sign a contract with AT&T Wireless. What irked us as pros was the nearly billion dollars a year this wayward group spent on ads and unreadable advertorial mini-magazines that popped up as newspaper circulars and were handed out at rodeos. All that cash and yet AT&T never bothered to do anything to improve a shoddy cell system nor its crappy customer handling.
The recent AT&T jumped onto to some kind of orbital shaped image, adopting a tagline we still don’t get: “Your world. Delivered.” We wondered how this newly-minted AT&T could deliver any world whatsoever when it frustrated so many with its erstwhile poor wireless signals.
AT&T has been delivering all things to all people, claiming to offer superior “modern” communication. But this company’s raison d’être is still not evident. In a fast-paced century actions speak louder than name changes.
Cingular stood for new and forward thinking. Still, AT&T says a bit too publicly that it will save 20 percent on operating costs if they force the brands into a single namesake. To do so, they have to forfeit the truly clever Cingular slogan, “Raising the Bar,” and are introducing a forgettable “Raising It Higher.” (A good Viagra tag, no doubt.)
It took one of us a while to let go of BellSouth as our BlackBerry provider; BS was the group that respectfully and gingerly brought him into the digital age. He got used to Cingular and then happy with it, though “fewest dropped calls” is quaint—and misnomeresque. Now he (the cuter one) is being forced to use AT&T. Ah well.
In the end it’s all about ego – you were expecting what? AT&T, the moniker we salute, and mock, AT&T stands tall in American history and SBC/AT&T/BellSouth/Crosby Stills Nash & Young wants to be seen as an ages-old corporation, rather than a suspiciously monopolistic rollup from earlier this decade.
Whatever the naming rationale, this smells like people who want to keep their jobs and thus add work that isn’t necessary, which is anti-Punk. Plus, we worry: What’s going to happen to the little Cingular orange man? Will be go the way of the Sock Puppet or Charlie the E*TRADE chimp? Will little Orange Dude be getting work somewhere?
The last time something this round had personality it was hanging on a desert island with Tom Hanks. And once again, we digress.
But before we let you go, we must insist …
Names like Cingular claim it is so about me and in are passé in the late 2000’s. Brand names “for the greater good” are in vogue. For instance: Join the Revolution!