Brand Destruction Research

Speaking of Brand Destruction: AT&T Axes Cingular

The following press release officially announces that Cingular is going away and that whoever concerns themselves with brands at AT&T is high on some really fucked up drugs.  Cingular is such a strong mobile brand and reading this release putting forth concepts like:

While the AT&T logo will be prominent in all advertising and communications, the ads will initially include a transitional graphic with both the AT&T and Cingular logos. The co-branded element will help underscore the association of the two companies and transfer Cingular's strong brand equity to the new AT&T.

Good luck transferring that equity.  It's worked so many times in the past.  Can't think of a company for whom it's worked but I'm sure AT&T knows best.

Press Release: Cingular is Now the New AT&T

Advertising, Re-Branding Efforts Begin, Will Continue Throughout 2007

SAN ANTONIO, Jan. 12 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- AT&T, the standard bearer of communications excellence for more than a century, is getting younger on Monday, when the company folds the six year-old Cingular wireless name into the iconic AT&T brand.

Starting Monday, Jan. 15, AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T) is launching a new multi- media campaign to begin transitioning the Cingular brand to AT&T in advertising and customer communications, throughout Web sites and nationwide retail stores, and on company buildings and vehicles.

"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. "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."

"Services are converging and the lines between wireless and wireline are increasingly blurred," said Boyd Peterson, analyst, Yankee Group. "Customers want simplification. By uniting the three company names into one, AT&T has simplified its message to the marketplace."

While the AT&T logo will be prominent in all advertising and communications, the ads will initially include a transitional graphic with both the AT&T and Cingular logos. The co-branded element will help underscore the association of the two companies and transfer Cingular's strong brand equity to the new AT&T. During the transition, the campaign will integrate popular imagery, phrases and icons from Cingular's traditional advertising, including the "raising the bar" tag line, the "Jack" character and the color orange.

Each transition campaign element will conclude with the Cingular and AT&T logos coming together while an announcer states that "Cingular is now the new AT&T." The broadcast spots will conclude with an animation in which the "Jack" character appears to "skywrite" the AT&T globe.

The campaign will kick off with several creative executions called "Raising It Higher," which morphs Cingular's familiar "raising the bar" tag line and imagery into the AT&T globe. The first version of this creative execution is called "Grain," which shows a combine harvesting wheat and appears to be drawing the Cingular five bars, but as the picture zooms out, the AT&T globe comes into focus. Both broadcast TV and print executions are scheduled to start the week of Jan. 15.

Additional spots called "Jets" and "Cars" will start appearing in the coming weeks. Additionally, over the coming months, AT&T will add new creative executions. The brand ads will be complemented soon by call-to- action product ads that will carry similar transitional branding elements.

As part of the re-branding initiative, approximately 2,000 nationwide company-owned wireless retail outlets and store kiosks will be transitioned over the coming year with AT&T-branded signage. Additionally, the approximately 15,000 personnel in these stores and kiosks will begin wearing AT&T-branded apparel in the coming months.

Callers will begin to hear the AT&T name mentioned on Cingular voice greetings in the coming weeks. Merger-transition messages will be placed on envelopes with customer billing starting in the coming weeks, and communications and the AT&T logo will begin to appear on customer bills starting in the coming months. Customers should watch the "remit to" line for when to make checks out to AT&T; those customers who pay their bills electronically or via credit card deduction will be notified as procedures change.

Customers will continue to see existing Cingular product and service names until all necessary legal and regulatory name-change filings are complete. The use of the AT&T and Cingular co-branded graphic will continue until customer awareness levels that Cingular has joined with AT&T are high. Once the transition ends, the color orange will continue to be associated with AT&T's wireless services, while the Cingular brand will be phased out.

AT&T estimates that 20 percent of the operating expense savings from the AT&T-BellSouth merger will come from advertising, as all operations are moved under a single brand. Previously, the three companies each supported distinct brands with three separate advertising campaigns.

AT&T is not disclosing the amount of the brand-transition campaign or media buy.

AT&T Emerging Media Retail Experience

Parallel with its re-branding efforts, AT&T is expanding its retail strategy to take advantage of Cingular's significant retail presence; thousands of stores nationwide are visited by millions of customers each month.

AT&T is creating an in-store "emerging media experience" where consumers can experience products and services before they purchase. Knowledgeable store personnel will be available to guide consumers through product trials and purchasing decisions.

AT&T has expanded its reach in its 13-state pre-merger local service territory, installing AT&T-branded media centers at more than 375 wireless stores. At these centers consumers can learn about, see live demonstrations and order AT&T Yahoo!(R) High Speed Internet and, where available, AT&T U-verse(SM) TV or AT&T Homezone(SM).

To help customers in many of these stores, AT&T will hire approximately 400 new sales representatives; many are in place today. These "home solutions consultants" will help customers learn about a range of AT&T wireline services that they can bundle with their wireless services. Additionally, customers today can arrange for a combined bill for wireline and wireless services and order AT&T Yahoo! High Speed Internet service as well as other key services.

In addition, AT&T Yahoo! High Speed Internet service is available through more than 750 agent-owned wireless locations, which also will have AT&T- branded signage. Through these additional locations, customers can order broadband and soon, other services.

Source: AT&T Inc.

Keds - Worn By Level Headed Christians

BusinessWeek/Interbrand Annual Ranking of the 100 Best Global Brands

Google Rises 46% in Brand Value, the Biggest Leap for Any Company in the Ranking's History

NEW YORK, July 27 /PRNewswire/ -- Google, Starbucks, Motorola, and eBay are among this year's top gainers in BusinessWeek's annual ranking of The Best Global Brands. For the sixth consecutive year, BusinessWeek has teamed up with Interbrand, a leading brand consultancy, to publish a ranking of the top 100 global brands by brand value.

The BusinessWeek/Interbrand Best Global Brands ranking measures an elusive but crucial quality. Every company wants its brand to get bigger. The hard part is balancing what the brand already is with a vision of what it would like to be. Companies that score high can count on plenty of customer loyalty as they push into risky expansion.

The 2006 ranking is brimming with hot brands that are crafting new and surprising ways to branch into entirely new product arenas. Starbucks is serving up music; Google is wading into selling ad time on the radio. Others are mining their brand's goodwill value to dodge problems, like McDonald's health and fitness marketing campaign and premium offerings to counter concerns about junk food.

Brand values were determined using the method Interbrand pioneered nearly 20 years ago and has since used to value more than 4,000 brands. Brand value is calculated as the net present value of the earnings that the brand is expected to generate and secure in the future for the time frame from July 1, 2005 to June 30, 2006. In order to be included in the top global brands list, a brand must have a minimum brand value of $2.7 billion, achieve about one third of their earnings outside of their home country, have publicly available marketing and financial data, and have a wider public profile beyond their direct customer base.

BusinessWeek's special report, The Best Global Brands, (August 7th issue) will be available at www.businessweek.com at 5:00 p.m. (ET) on Thursday, July 27th and on newsstands Monday, July 31st.

About BusinessWeek:

BusinessWeek is a leading global business media organization, providing unparalleled insight and analysis to a worldwide audience of business leaders. Founded in 1929 and published by the McGraw-Hill Companies, BusinessWeek magazine is the market leader, with 4.7 million readers each week in 140 countries. Local language editions include Chinese, Russian, Arabic, and Bahasa Indonesian. Launched in 1994, BusinessWeek Online is the preeminent provider of daily, essential business news, information, and services to business decision-makers. Reaching 80% of the nation's households, BusinessWeek Weekend delivers important business, consumer and financial news to television viewers every week.

About Interbrand:

Interbrand, the leading brand consultancy and authors of the annual ranking of The Best Global Brands, published by BusinessWeek, combines the rigorous strategy and analysis of a management consulting practice with the entrepreneurial and creative spirit of branding and design. The company offers a comprehensive array of consulting services that guide clients in the creation, enhancement, maintenance and valuation of their most valuable asset -- their brands. Founded in 1974, Interbrand has offices in over 30 cities in more than 20 countries around the globe and clients from among the most respected businesses. For more information about Interbrand, visit www.Interbrand.com.

BusinessWeek/Interbrand's Annual Ranking of The Best Global Brands For 2006

     Rank       Company       Brand       Percent        Country of
     2005                     Value       Change         Ownership
                              2006       (over 2005)
                            $MILLIONS

     1    Coca-Cola          67,000        -1%             U.S.
     2    Microsoft          59,926        -5%             U.S.
     3    IBM                56,201         5%             U.S.
     4    GE                 48,907         4%             U.S.
     5    Intel              32,319        -9%             U.S.
     6    Nokia              30,131        14%             Finland
     7    Toyota             27,941        12%             Japan
     8    Disney             27,848         5%             U.S.
     9    McDonald's         27,501         6%             U.S.
    10    Mercedes-Benz      21,795         9%             Germany
    11    Citi               21,458         7%             U.S.
    12    Marlboro           21,350         1%             U.S.
    13    Hewlett-Packard    20,458         8%             U.S.
    14    American Express   19,641         6%             U.S.
    15    BMW                19,617        15%             Germany
    16    Gillette           19,579        12%             U.S.
    17    Louis Vuitton      17,606        10%             France
    18    Cisco              17,532         6%             U.S.
    19    Honda              17,049         8%             Japan
    20    Samsung            16,169         8%             S.Korea
    21    Merrill Lynch      13,001         8%             U.S.
    22    Pepsi              12,690         2%             U.S.
    23    Nescafe            12,507         2%             Switzerland
    24    Google             12,376        46%             U.S.
    25    Dell               12,256        -7%             U.S.
    26    Sony               11,695         9%             Japan
    27    Budweiser          11,662        -2%             U.S.
    28    HSBC               11,622        11%             Britain
    29    Oracle             11,459         5%             U.S.
    30    Ford               11,056       -16%             U.S.
    31    Nike               10,897         8%             U.S.
    32    UPS                10,712         8%             U.S.
    33    JPMorgan           10,205         8%             U.S.
    34    SAP                10,007        11%             Germany
    35    Canon               9,968        10%             Japan
    36    Morgan Stanley      9,762         0%             U.S.
    37    Goldman Sachs       9,640        13%             U.S.
    38    Pfizer              9,591        -4%             U.S.
    39    Apple               9,130        14%             U.S.
    40    Kellogg's           8,776         6%             U.S.
    41    IKEA                8,763        12%             Sweden
    42    UBS                 8,734        15%             Switzerland
    43    Novartis            7,880         2%             Switzerland
    44    Siemens             7,828         4%             Germany
    45    Harley-Davidson     7,739         5%             U.S.
    46    Gucci               7,158         8%             Italy
    47    eBay                6,755        18%             U.S.
    48    Philips             6,730        14%             Netherlands
    49    Accenture           6,728        10%             Bermuda
    50    MTV                 6,627         0%             U.S.
    51    Nintendo            6,559         1%             Japan
    52    Gap                 6,416       -22%             U.S.
    53    L'Oreal             6,392         6%             France
    54    Heinz               6,223       -10%             U.S.
    55    Yahoo!              6,056        15%             U.S.
    56    Volkswagen          6,032         7%             Germany
    57    Xerox               5,918         4%             U.S.
    58    Colgate             5,633         9%             U.S.
    59    Wrigley's           5,449        -2%             U.S.
    60    KFC                 5,350         5%             U.S.
    61    Chanel              5,156         8%             France
    62    Avon                5,040        -3%             U.S.
    63    Nestle              4,932         4%             Switzerland
    64    Kleenex             4,842        -2%             U.S.
    65    Amazon.com          4,707        11%             U.S.
    66    Pizza Hut           4,694        -5%             U.S.
    67    Danone              4,638         3%             France
    68    Caterpillar         4,580        12%             U.S.
    69    Motorola            4,569        18%             U.S.
    70    Kodak               4,406       -12%             U.S.
    71    Adidas              4,290         6%             Germany
    72    Rolex               4,237         8%             Switzerland
    73    Zara                4,235        14%             Spain
    74    Audi                4,165        13%             Germany
    75    Hyundai             4,078        17%             S.Korea
    76    BP                  4,010         5%             Britain
    77    Panasonic           3,977         7%             Japan
    78    Reuters             3,961         2%             Britain
    79    Kraft               3,943        -7%             U.S.
    80    Porsche             3,927         4%             Germany
    81    Hermes              3,854         9%             France
    82    Tiffany & Co.       3,819         9%             U.S.
    83    Hennessy            3,576        12%             France
    84    Duracell            3,576        -3%             U.S.
    85    ING                 3,474         9%             Netherlands
    86    Cartier             3,360        10%             France
    87    Moet & Chandon      3,257         9%             France
    88    Johnson & Johnson   3,193         5%             U.S.
    89    Shell               3,173         4%             Netherlands
    90    Nissan              3,108        -3%             Japan
    91    Starbucks           3,099        20%             U.S.
    92    Lexus               3,070        NA              Japan
    93    Smirnoff            3,032        -2%             Britain
    94    LG                  3,010        14%             S.Korea
    95    Bulgari             2,875         6%             Italy
    96    Prada               2,874         4%             Italy
    97    Armani              2,783         4%             Italy
    98    Burberry            2,783        NA              Britain
    99    Nivea               2,692         4%             Germany
    100   Levi's              2,689         1%             U.S.

Source: BusinessWeek

CONTACT: BusinessWeek Contacts:
Heather Carpenter - +1-212-512-2854
Patti Straus - +1-212-512-2680
Interbrand Contacts:
Lisa Marsala - +1-212-798-7646
Jeff Swystun - +1-917-690-5383

Web site: http://www.businessweek.com/
http://www.interbrand.com/

Update:
Business Week on The World's Best Brands