The Integrative Stream

The new AT&T: (at&t)

Last night, while waiting to check up on Dick Clark’s health, I saw the first new commercial for “at&t”, the brand formerly known as sbc and AT&T. The tagline is “Your World, Delivered”, which is entirely forgettable (I just had to go look it up on their web site). The commercial did a good job of addressing why this matters for consumers: AT&T’s ability to invent new technologies, coupled with sbc’s ability to get them to customers, an ability that the old AT&T clearly lacked. Of course, Bell Labs was the source of AT&T’s reputation for innovation, and Bell Labs was torn off and turned into Lucent years ago, but a reputation for technological savvy has still clung to the death star logo. The new company is right to push the connection.

And yet, this morning, the New York Times arrived on my doorstep in an at&t (writing it that way is actually a little painful, given my slavish adherence to the general rules of punctuation and capitalization) promotional plastic bag, complete with the “Your World, Delivered” slogan. What does that even mean, anyway? If at&t wants to compete in the marketplace, it needs to push this idea of a technically advanced company capable of effective operations, not some fuzzy concept of personal relevance.