Jack Yan: the Persuader Blog: A billion dollars of nothingness

A billion dollars of nothingness

Last year, I predicted that AT&T’s new branding campaign would be a billion dollars of nothingness. And if other bloggers are anything to go by, I was right.
The original quotation about the logo from the CEO was, ‘The revitalized mark symbolizes these attributes—innovation, integrity, quality, reliability and unsurpassed customer care.’ It followed from an equally forgettable quotation about the vision and direction of the merged company. In other words, ‘We have no idea what differentiates us, because every other company says it offers the same.’
That message has been carried forth into its advertising agency and its campaign, so perhaps we should actually be congratulating it for using a billion dollars so closely to the company’s lack of vision?
Joseph Jaffe summarizes it well at his blog, highlighting that AT&T, with its ‘Blogging delivered’ billboard, is not even living its brand. The term blogging does not appear at the AT&T site.

Posted by Jack Yan, 01:09 permalink

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Not only does AT&T have the gall to spend $1 billion re-branding itself, but they then rub our noses in it by making us listen to Oasis every time we turn on the TV! Don’t they have something more worthwhile to spend their money on? Off the top-of-my-head, a few suggestions:

· Spend a fraction of this money on community technology centers to teach and help under-served areas;

· Deploy broadband to rural communities.

Considering how unlikely any of this is to happen, maybe a better song for AT&T would be “Don’t look back in anger.”

# posted by

Jason: 2/24/2006 08:47:00 PM

Hear, hear, Jason! I love it! The campaign could still have gone ahead with less banality and less cost, and whomever chose Oasis could have still indulged in buying the licence to reuse—if AT&T had simply been more true with its spend. And, like you say, “do good”, grab some headlines, and whatever they spend on your suggestions could have netted them even more brand equity. For a billion bucks, this is emerging more and more as one badly thought-out campaign.

# posted by

Jack Yan: 2/24/2006 09:16:00 PM