Friday, December 30, 2005

What goes around....


Weird how things come full circle if you give them long enough.

Here's something from today's Wall Street Journal:

AT&T to 'Reintroduce' Itself
With a Big Campaign

By DIONNE SEARCEY
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
December 29, 2005; Page B4

In a bid to re-energize one of the country's best-known brands, the new AT&T Inc. plans to kick off a massive ad campaign on New Year's Eve.

The campaign, which includes television commercials, billboards, airport signs and a theme song by the rock band Oasis, comes a month after SBC Communications Inc. acquired AT&T Corp. and decided to keep the historic phone company's moniker. Executives said the new campaign is bigger than any marketing buys in the history of both SBC and the old AT&T.

AT&T won't say how much it is spending on the campaign, which is being handled by Omnicom Group Inc.'s GSD&M and Rodgers Townsend. Advertising experts estimate it will cost $800 million to $1 billion.

This got me to thinking: This 'new' AT&T is one big honkin company. And, as big companies go, they have only one primary goal: Increase shareholder value.

How? By growing their sales and revenue. How to do that? Good products and BUYING OTHER PHONE COMPANIES. I yell this because, damn it.... they're gonna buy all the other phone companies and reconstitute AT&T! MaBell wants to live yet again.... Even the US governments anti-trust department can't stop her long term.

You heard it here first. Heh.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Good post. Must be nice to have a marketing budget to just go back and forth between brands and names on a whim.

An excellent read from an ex-evangelical.

  As you know, I once was an evangelical megachurch pastor and my pastoral career stretched over many years. Eventually, I could no longer t...