The Hot Iron

Friday, January 05, 2007

What is New?

The telephone company SBC bought AT&T and became “the new AT&T.” Sorry, that’s at&t – all lower case.  This happened earlier in 2006, yet they still say they are new.  Even when they first announced it, I didn’t know what was new, other than the case change of their name, a 3rd dimension to their logo, and renaming some services (e.g. not calling it DSL anymore).

Now that at&t is acquiring BellSouth, will it still be new?  As they have indicated they will eliminate the brand Cingular, will it be “the new at&t wireless?”

I don’t know.  I looked up the definition of the word new at Merriam-Webster’s Web site and it was no help either.

Maybe AOL not charging for its service anymore and going by – you guessed it – “the new AOL” leads towards the answer?

I’m sure it’s so that, when anyone calls with a problem, they can say “sorry, we’re the NEW at&t;” and ignore it

It’s a bad marketing message, in my opinion, because it implies that the old AT&T;must have been lousy. It’s kind of like seeing “Under new management” on a restaurant sign; that automatically makes me suspicious about what happened under the old management.

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