Hello, Cingular? This is AT&T – We Just Killed Your Brand

The new AT&T next week will start phasing out the Cingular brand it acquired full control over recently, this after several billions of investment in brand advertising over the years, a Reuters story reported last night. It quoted a highly placed AT&T official and said the process is expected to play out over the several months, with communications in the interim showing dual Cingular-AT&T identity.

So, I guess the naysayers of Cingular being the choice of carrier for the iPhone deal now have something else to talk about. The brand slate is in essence being wiped clean, with the “new” AT&T really just building its brand. That’s nice for Steve Jobs and Apple, in my opinion, being partnered with a fresh new face in the cellular brand space. What’s ironic is that Cingular actually acquired the old AT&T Wireless, which had been a good early player but began having problems with an aging network. That company, however, has no connection at all with the new AT&T — which is really the old SBC. Got that? I can personally relate to this whole thing because I was an AT&T Wireless customer for many years, then went through the changeover to Cingular, and now will go through the changeover back to the AT&T brand.

Hey, how about that AT&T? What do us round-trippers get for hanging in there all these years? How about a free iPhone? [HAH! The cellular industry treats loyal customers like trash. All they care about is sucking in new customers, offering them the world.]

But where I really relate to this story is this: I was one of four consultants involved in the Cingular name development process, hired by their branding firm — back in ’99, I believe it was. That was fun. No, Cingular wasn’t one of my name ideas. Mine were much better… 🙂 I came up with some 50 of them — all coined, clear name candidates. I originally thought the word Cingular sucked (naturally), but then absolutely loved what the company did to build meaning around the brand — which was the work of their outstanding advertising agency, the New York office of BBDO. I thought it was really stellar branding work, one of the best new brand development efforts I’d seen in years. Of course, they had the budget for it, too, and they poured on the bucks — including Super Bowl ads. It was the kind of thing I’d put in the class of Apple. And, for that reason, I wasn’t surprised to hear in Jobs’ iPhone announcement that Cingular was part of the deal. Both firms get consumer branding, bigtime. Now I guess we’ll see how much the new AT&T (nee SBC) really does.

Tags: AT&T, Cingular, Apple, iPhone, Steve Jobs