I read in Ad Age recently that AT&T, the nation's second-largest advertiser, has shifted lead agency responsibilities for its estimated $3.345 billion account to Omnicom Group's BBDO, New York, the agency for what was Cingular Wireless, now AT&T's mobility unit.

Is anyone else besides me annoyed that AT&T has dumped the Cingular name? I liked that little orange jumping jack. I thought it had great brand value, was interesting and fun, and although the orange presented process color printing problems, it had other valuable attributes. Doris Brown, VP of Marketing at Pantone, talks about the emotional attributes of different colors. Here is what she had to say about orange: "Orange is a warmer, more vibrant combination of red and yellow that shares a lot of attributes of those colors. It conjures up energy, warmth and the sun. It is not as intense or aggressive as red might be but carries a lot of the cheerfulness of yellow." She indicates that even though orange is out of the traditional color gamut space of four color process (though within the hexachrome gamut), there is a big pickup in the use of orange, especially for packaging.

And what did she say about blue, AT&T's corporate color? "Blue is America’s favorite color, but blue has also been the color for big companies to run with, like IBM and AT&T. Even Xerox used to be blue. If you were dealing with anything with dollars and numbers, as a business color you would go to blue. It spoke of your technical capabilities and your ability to deal with numbers and figures." Exciting, huh?

When Cingular was still Cingular, three of my four telephone companies used orange in their logo--Cingular, Vonage, and my cell phone company in the Dominican Republic, France-based Orange Telecommunications. I have heard it reported that Cingular invested some $4 billion dollars in building the brand. What is AT&T thinking??? Does anyone else besides me see AT&T as an old, boring company? If you read Carly Fiorina's book, Tough Choices, where she talks about her AT&T, Lucent and HP experiences--a terrific book, by the way--you get a insider's view of how internally focused the company was--and is. I, for one, would be more likely to migrate to a fun, innovative brand like Cingular if I were looking for a new phone company, than stodgy old AT&T, even if they do have the iPhone. And I am old... how do you think the younger folks feel? Did AT&T do ANY market research before they made that decision? Or was it all based on corporate ego?

Maybe BBDO can talk some sense into them. What do you think?

Update 7/12

I inquired about interviewing someone at AT&T and got the following email response, which is probably pretty much the same information I would have gotten had I spoken with someone live. It was interesting to me to see how much discussion this topic generated. I wonder if the majority of consumers really do think about doing business with the company with the most complete portfolio ... I would think that is more of a B2B thing. Well, for those of you who have been unhappy with Cingular customer service, I would be interested to hear if it has improved or improves over time with AT&T. Of course, we could all go to Sprint, and if they don't meet our requirements, we can just deluge the call center and get fired. Interesting times.

AT&T Response:

Around the world, the AT&T brand is recognized for meaningful innovation, a commitment to customer service, high quality, and exceptional reliability. One brand is less confusing and better communicates AT&T’s benefits as the most complete provider. One brand also conveys to customers the most important aspects of the AT&T-BellSouth merger – convenience, convergence, and integration. As all operations are moved under a single brand, AT&T expects to realize related synergies with an estimated net present value of approximately $2.8 billion. To continue investing in three separate brands is inefficient.

Our branding decisions and executions are rooted in customer research. Through customer discussions, we concluded the AT&T brand best represents the traits that customers told us were important to them in a communications company. Our research shows that the most complete provider will win in the marketplace. Re-branding wireless more clearly communicates AT&T’s complete portfolio.

Our wireless and wireline agencies are collaborating, balancing creative and media to generate the best mix for the new company. These agencies worked closely together to develop the branding campaign.