Branding is fun and easy!\u00a0 Here\u2019s the latest example:<\/p>\n
AT&T is the mother of all brands, going back to the 19th<\/sup> century.\u00a0 In 1983, it launched the first cellular telephone service in the U.S.\u00a0 But a year later, AT&T was forced to spin off local service as part of anti-trust legislation; seven \u201cbaby bells\u201d were created to offer local service, two of which were Bell South and Southwestern Bell (SBC).\u00a0 And they all started selling wireless services, making them each direct competitors of the others.\u00a0 In 2001, Cingular Wireless was formed as a joint venture by SBC (60%) and BellSouth (40%).\u00a0 It started out poorly but steadily improved.\u00a0 By 2004, it was doing so well that AT&T surrendered and sold off its wireless business, to Cingular.\u00a0 This made Cingular the number one wireless brand in the U.S.\u00a0 Since then, hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent developing the Cingular brand, while the AT&T brand was headed for the dumpster.\u00a0 (You with us so far?)<\/p>\n Then, a reversal of brand fortune.\u00a0 In 2005, SBC bought its parent AT&T, and in a nice piece of reverse-branding, launched \u201cthe new AT&T\u201d, which owned 60% of Cingular.\u00a0 And then, on January 7, the FCC approved AT&T\u2019s acquisition of BellSouth.\u00a0 (Can you see where this is going?)<\/p>\n Meanwhile, over at Apple Computer, holiday sales of iTunes were so strong that, on January 9, they officially changed their name to just Apple Inc., to signal they are much more than a computer company.\u00a0 At the same time, they launched the new iPhone, and announced it would be available exclusively from (drum roll\u2026) Cingular Wireless!\u00a0 Which was pretty interesting considering that, just three days later, Cingular ceased to exist; on January 12, AT&T announced that Cingular, the brand with over $40 Billion in revenue, is going away and will just be called AT&T.<\/p>\n So here\u2019s the pitch:\u00a0 Get the new iPhone, from Apple, formerly Apple Computer, available only from AT&T (the NEW AT&T), formerly Cingular, (which you may know as BellSouth and\/or SBC), formerly part of AT&T (the OLD AT&T).\u00a0 Got it?<\/p>\n Oh, in some markets, they may keep the Cingular name.\u00a0 Seriously, you can\u2019t make this stuff up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Branding is fun and easy!\u00a0 Here\u2019s the latest example: AT&T is the mother of all brands, going back to the 19th century.\u00a0 In 1983, it launched the first cellular telephone service in the U.S.\u00a0 But a year later, AT&T was forced to spin off local service as part of anti-trust…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[90,126,171,257,787,1086,1350],"class_list":["post-302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2","tag-att","tag-bellsouth","tag-branding","tag-cingular","tag-marketing","tag-sbc","tag-wireless"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}