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A Cingularly bad name!

Not sure how many people remember the year 2000. People were jumping under desks praying that their PCs wouldn't explode and Britney Spears was still on her first pack of cigarettes and third tattoo. 2000 was also the year that Cingular was born. A humble idea to merge SBC and BellSouth's wireless units. The newborn company was still dealing with the aftermath of even earlier mergers, such as the absorption of SNET, PacBell Wireless, Cellular One and Comcast Cellular into SBC. "Hey I have an idea", the words can still be heard echoing in the halls... lets spend $4 Billion (that is 4,000 - one million dollar checks to the uninitiated) and rebrand our whole company to be called Cingular (http://news.com.com/A%20Cingular%20challenge/2009-1033_3-930139.html).

Now far be it for me to shout at the wind, but $4 Billion dollars clearly doesn't buy what it once did. After all, Cingular has now decided to shelf this whole Cingular Wireless brand, having purchased AT&T, and re-brand everything to AT&T. Hell they'll need to spend another couple of billion letting everyone with a cell phone know that they are now AT&T. Who's to blame? ...

Mass Market Media!

That's right; I said it, Mass Market Media. $1 Million per spot for a commercial on American Idol. $90K per page per day in the local newspaper. $50 per 15 second spot on for each of 5,000 radio stations in Los Angeles alone. How about a few million dollars for advertising and fines on a billboard campaign that'll stop traffic and get you arrested for terrorism (http://www.latimes.com/business/custom/admark/la-na-briefs3.4feb03,1,3164326.story?ctrack=1&cset=true)?

You see, it costs so much nowadays to let people know that you made a huge mistake (ask Coke about New Coke and Coke Classic) that you don't have money left over to make your products better. They would have just called everyone on their cell phones (you know they are listening in, anyways) but calls keep getting dropped. No money left to add more towers or increase bandwidth. At least the Mass Market Media allowed Coke and Pepsi to refine their products (optimized to reduce confusion) before they suckered them into an escalation war over half percents. The cell providers still have a long way to go. Where is my video on demand, e-commerce, nude wallpapers (ok they got those ready) or mobile micropayments allowing me to buy a diet cherry vanilla decaffeinated zero calorie Coke. Heck, I'll settle for a continuous 3 minute conversation on Sepulveda Blvd.

With all the money being spent for Mass Market Media on name and brand changes, how will they afford to let me know which of the bunch has the highest quality call service? Why build the network when you can spend billions on letting me know you already have it…(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8muHzGbxkA) … (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNT1Y2sLLKU) ... (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTC2bCz9qaI).

The answer is to forget Mass Market Media and just hand out the money. US census figures show there are roughly 200 million people in the US over 13 years of age. With a $4 billion dollar budget that would be $20 per person in the US. Give me twenty bucks and not only will I remember you ... but I may also forget that you just dropped my call.