Buh-bye Cingular!

January 12, 2007 By Geoff Duncan

Starting Monday, the newly reconstituted AT&T will begin an advertising campaign, replacing the Cingular wireless phone brand with its own.

Soon we won’t have Cingular to kick around anymore. Beginning Monday, a new advertising campaign will get underway in which Cingular—the largest wireless phone network in the U.S.—will see its identity taken away and replaced with that of the newly reconstituted AT&T. For a short time, the shift will be marked by a transitional graphic that contains both the AT&T and Cingular logos, but eventually the AT&T logo will take center stage on all customer communications and advertising, as well as on company buildings, vehicles, and retail outlets.

“Around the world, our customers recognize the AT&T brand for meaningful innovation, a commitment to customer service, high quality and exceptional reliability,” said Edward E. Whitacre Jr., chairman and CEO of AT&T, in a release. “AT&T, BellSouth, and Cingular are now one company, and going to market with our services under one brand is the right thing to do.”

The path to AT&T controlling Cingular is tortuous: AT&T Wireless started off as a separate company spun off from the original AT&T; Cingular bought AT&T Wireless and killed off the brand…but then one of Cingular’s owners, SBC, bought what remained of the original AT&T and took the brand for its landline services. This new AT&T later bought BellSouth—which just happened to be Cingular’s other owner. And now everything is AT&T all over again.

Not that Cingular hasn’t left some bad blood in its wake: a pending class action suit against the company alleges it intentionally let service on the AT&T Wireless network degrade as a way to get customers to switch to Cingular…and then charged them early termination fees on top of account origination fees to do so.

Lest one think the rebranding is a nostalgia trip being enjoyed by titans of industry longing for the mean old days of Ma Bell, it ain’t so: the new AT&T is all about brand consolidation and cutting operating expenses. The company said 20 percent of the cost cutting it will achieve through its merger with BellSouth will come just in the form of consolidated advertising.

AT&T’s add campaign to announce the demise of the Cingular brand will take several forms, co-opting elements of Cinglar’s “raising the bar” campaign in television and print; the company will also transition branding in retail locations, insert the AT&T name into communications and services, and make its 15,000 retail personnel start wearing snazzy AT&T apparel. One thing AT&T won’t tell us about the campaign: how much money its blowing on the transition.

Showing 7 comments

cathy mcke at 12:03am 8th February 2007 two years ago we bought my prepaid phone and had at&t provide service, then cingular took over (what a rage they bring out of me) and now say i can no longer buy phone cards as of Dec 31 06.and march 31 07 can no longer use my phone. What is any right or recourse or compensation i may have? any info would help before i do communication battle with them. I would not have bought my still fully functional yet serviceless phone had i known this was possible.Damn cingular! I'm sorry readers,I'm not mad at you, of course. But i've been in states of anger because of the constant poor service, advertising on my time and messing me up on important calls/texting.
Patricia at 12:11pm 20th January 2007 Typically, if you are under contract with a provider and they cease to exist because they were bought out, the contracts no longer have to be binding and even though At&t won't be sending a letter out to notify anyone, I suggest you call and let them know that your contract is no longer valid and you wish to terminate it.
You do have to initiate the call or better yet, write them a certified letter.
This happened to me a few years ago with another provider and I closed my account because the contract was no longer with the original company and they complied.
Dave at 10:33am 18th January 2007 I had nothing but problems with Cingulare. Rude service people and continously dropped calls. both Verizon and TMobile worked much better. When I had AT&T previously I had no problems whatsoever!
Matt at 2:52pm 16th January 2007 As a Cingular customer, I wonder if I will be asked to change anything, or if my contract will still be binding. Does anyone know if this will have any effect of current Cingular customers?
Bruce at 1:36pm 16th January 2007 Bad idea
American Telephone and Telegraph
makes me think of wires, wires, and more wires.
Stupid, Stupid, Stupid
Re-think it boys
History of mistakes repeating themselves at 6:16am 16th January 2007 Cingular did it well enough to become the largest U.S. Network...

AT&T, being the bloated corporate behemoth that it is, has been pretty consistent with pissing off it's customers, and generally turning people off; due to this, it's a terrible idea to get rid of a brand that works.

You can certainly wrote off Cingular now,
the AT&T BORG will certainly destroy what's left of the reputation before phase it out, and boot out the people that made it work.

=/
Say it aint so! at 2:08pm 13th January 2007 This is sooo stupid! I'm used to the Cingular name as "raising the bar" and being the largest! The concept of history is usually good, however all of the revamping of AT&T leaves a sour taste in my mouth. I can accept them as part of Cingular, but the other way around leaves me feeling negative. Now I will have to re-think my wireless provider choice.