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AT&T, SBC plan advertising blitz about their union
(Daily Oklahoman, The (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Dec. 30--The marriage of SBC Communications and AT&T Corp. is about to yield its first offspring: a mammoth year-long advertising campaign that begins New Year's Eve.
The new AT&T will begin its pitch with sponsorships of several television specials ringing in the New Year, along with a multimedia sign campaign in New York's Time Square.
And that's only the beginning of an ad campaign that some analysts are estimating will top half a billion dollars. AT&T officials would not disclose the cost of the ad blitz.
"The purpose is really twofold," said telecommunications analyst Jeff Kagan in Atlanta. "To update the thinking of investors and customers on the changing company and the changing industry."
But does the 120-year-old AT&T brand, known virtually worldwide, really need a massive advertising campaign to re-introduce itself?
Absolutely, said James Martin, senior vice president at Austin, Texas-based GSD&M Advertising, one of two firms that created the campaign.
"It wasn't a tired old brand really as much as it was a brand that had quit servicing certain target audiences," Martin said. "They didn't market to residential customers any more. Their emphasis as of late has been that enterprise space with large companies.
"So we're reintroducing them back to customers they used to serve."
In a news release Thursday, AT&T said the campaign will include advertising in more than 100 newspapers, 50 national magazines, 30 cable television networks, 1,000 billboards and a "significant" online presence.
"SBC is essentially renaming itself AT&T, so it's important that current SBC customers are aware of this," said Lisa Pierce, a telecommunications analyst with Forrester Research. "And certainly it also wants to assure legacy ATT customers that the company they know is pressing forward."
Consumers will hear and see the "Your World. Delivered" tag line repeatedly. Martin calls it the "one brand promise that resonates with all those different customer segments."
SBC announced it would adopt the historic AT&T name in October, about three weeks before the $16 billion deal closed. The merged company's stock began trading under AT&T's "T" symbol on the New York Stock Exchange on Dec. 1.
The new AT&T maintains its headquarters in San Antonio, and company officials have said they have no plans to relocate the headquarters to the New York area where the old AT&T was based.
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