MA BELL’S NEXT BRAND

Only months after AT&T Wireless launched a new ad campaign last fall, AT&T proper embarked on its own campaign, though with considerably more force. While AT&T Wireless spent slightly less than $100 million in the first nine months of 2003 (the most recent numbers available from TNS Media Intelligence/CMR), AT&T spent $200 million on its new campaign alone—roughly $1 for every adult in the United States.

The goal of the carrier’s new campaign is to successfully fix its identity in the minds of the public. A 125-year-old company, AT&T has been through more changes in that last five years than the 10 before it, and is overdue for a clear expression of persona. Its last branding push came in 2000, before the company had spun off its wireless and cable units and before it bestowed David Dorman with his current title, chairman.

"The bottom line is, Ma Bell doesn't live here anymore,” Dorman said in a company statement heralding the new campaign.

The company split its approach between the business and consumer markets. In one ad for business customers, zeroes and ones rain down upon a motionless city, allowing its people to move again in a metaphor for the importance of networks for businesses in motion. “Can your network do this?” the ad asks.

The consumer campaign focuses on the ampersand in AT&T’s name as a symbol of added value. One of its ads creates faces made up of a patchwork of rapidly changing faces from various cultures, all singing “Come Together.” 

The overall campaign was designed by Young & Rubicam, which also produced the humorous Emmy-nominated Computer Associates ad in which both of an executive’s trusted right-hand men are knocked unconscious before an important meeting, leaving the viewer with the question, “Is your data backup as reliable as it should be?”