Cellular One More Time

Ask the proverbial man on the street to name the most recognizable brand in the wireless industry, and his answer is likely to be Cellular One. As its 20th year approaches, the Cellular One brand name still scores high in consumer awareness studies, even in urban markets where competitors have spent billions on brand awareness — and where, typically, Cellular One no longer exists.

In fact, the oldest brand in wireless is now relegated to just 20 small rural carriers across the U.S. But even though its brand name was associated with rural carriers, Cellular One still conducted a high-profile, nationwide television advertising campaign.

Camille Cadman, director of marketing with Bellevue, Wash.-based Cellular One Group (which manages and promotes the brand), eventually grew tired of seeing television spots for Cellular One in places like Seattle, where the service isn't even offered anymore. So last year, the company teamed with advertising agency Publicis to stress Cellular One's small-town roots with the tagline, “Call on someone you know.”

“Instead of hiding from the fact that we're not a Sprint or AT&T, we're actually making that our point of differentiation,” Cadman said. “We're based where you are based. Not everyone can say that.”

“Cellular One at one time was the biggest brand in the country,” said Cellular One Group President Chris Boyll. “It was created to compete with the Bell companies. Now it has gone full circle.”

For years, the Cellular One brand was associated with big-name carriers. American Radio Telephone Service, an independent carrier in Washington, D.C., created the name in 1984. When competition exploded in the late 1980s and the value of large footprints became increasingly clear, carriers including Southwestern Bell Mobile Systems, McCaw Cellular Communications and Vanguard Cellular rallied behind the brand.

As a result, a new organization, the Cellular One Group, was formed to own, manage and promote the brand nationwide. Cellular One began attracting individual wireless carriers across the nation, providing them with a single program to promote increased quality of service for their customers coast to coast. But when the merger and acquisition frenzy seized wireless in the early 1990s, the Cellular One brand slowly fell to smaller rural carriers. Rural operator Western Wireless acquired the Cellular One Group and accompanying brand name in 2001.

This is not a good time for the rural market: Subscriber additions are falling as competition invades their markets, and roaming revenue — once the cash cow of their businesses — is steadily declining. But while rural carriers are best suited for local and regional plans, their customers have been conditioned to want nationwide pricing.

“In the competitive landscape, Cellular One's brand equity is largely depleted for most savvy wireless customers served by multiple national footprint carriers,” said Cliff Raskind, director of Strategy Analytics' global wireless practice. “The name Cellular One evokes the images of analog service and the countless defunct pigtail antennas mounted through the windows of older cars that we see everyday.”

That's not exactly the message Cellular One wants to send, so Publicis designed an advertising campaign spotlighting the brand's longevity and customer-centric approach via messages such as “Who is your provider this week?” and “We'll give you a number, not treat you like one.”

Publicis also came up with a branding tool kit that allows member companies — which voted unanimously in favor of the strategy in March — to pick and choose from various television, radio, newspaper and billboard ads, all integrated with the “Call on someone you know” message.

“We like the message a lot,” said Tom McLaughlin, vice president of sales and marketing with Cellular One member Rural Cellular. “The positioning fits with what we're doing here.”

Because member companies launched the campaign only in early June, Rural Cellular says it's too early to gauge consumer response. But McLaughlin, who's been affiliated with Cellular One for 12 years, said the brand needed a unified message, and Rural Cellular already is using some of the new television commercials.

According to Cadman, the basic message is simple: “We've been in the community for 10 to 15 years. We know your needs and understand your lifestyle.”

Cadman is trying to avoid the trap all wireless operators have fallen into: advertising to each other, and not the customer.

“I haven't really seen a pure effort from a carrier to advertise, market and target the customer,” she said. “We wouldn't exist without the customer, yet we do a lot of babbling back and forth to each other. I've been guilty of it, and I hate it at the same time.”

Ken Hyers, a wireless analyst for In-Stat MDR, said the time is right to overhaul the Cellular One name, which is quickly becoming a secondary market brand as competition races in.

“Regional carriers can go in and customize the brand for their markets better, since rural markets are not homogeneous,” said Hyers. “But I question how long it can last when rural carriers have to begin competing against large regional carriers for top-rank customers.”

Granted, the number of Cellular One companies has dwindled in recent years due to market consolidation, but it's difficult to imagine the brand will ever go away entirely. Cadman and Boyll say the Cellular One Group still receives a fair number of applications from smaller PCS operators to license the brand, and members are required to meet strict criteria set through a national licensing program of quality standards. If the member doesn't meet those standards, they risk getting kicked out.

“I don't see why anyone would want to give up the brand name because it has so much equity in it,” said wireless veteran Herschel Shosteck, chairman and CEO of industry consultancy Shosteck Associates. “Some operators are so small that it's not worth the effort of large companies to try and buy them out. So although the trend is toward consolidation, there could still be pockets of Cellular One 10 years from now.”