One Cingular Sensation

Joseph Laszlo | January 12, 2007, 07:01 PM

I won't recount the highlights of the long and intricate story behind the rise and fall of Cingular as a brand name; actually USA Today does a good job of that.

But I will say that I well remember the day when the Cingular name was first announced (I think my reaction was "well, at least it's not as weird a name as 'Verizon'"), and the day when AT&T Wireless became Cingular, and I'm a little sorry to see the brand go.

My colleague Ian Fogg and I have been talking about carrier branding efforts of late. Even in this day of bundled, unified services, he's a proponent of carriers maintaining a couple of different brands that they can use to hone their services and image for different constituencies.

And I agree with that view, at least sometimes, and particularly in the current case. There's merit to the idea that Cingular as a brand resonates a bit better with young consumers, while AT&T is THE phone company to many, it needs efforts like AT&T BlueRoom (which started out as SBC BlueRoom) to 'youthify' itself.

Bottom line: Cingular was a pretty good brand, and I hope that AT&T, over time, finds some clever way to keep the brand around, rather than simply writing off its equity as a strategy whose time has gone for good.