Say goodbye to Cingular. Not as a service, but as a brand name. Looks like SBC, the majority holder of the cellphone provider has finally gone through the final throes of merging with AT&T last Friday and plans on changing its official name to AT&T. Though Cingular is certainly well known at this point, I can only guess that the company believes the AT&T name is just more embedded in people's heads. The plans are to use the name for all aspects of the company—from local and long distance to wireless, data and video. Oh, and instead of the name being in all capital letters as it used to be, expect to see the new company written as at&t. Not sure how the lower case letters are going to help, but I guess those marketing people have to earn their money somehow.
The overhaul is aimed at freshening up the brand, Whitacre says. He says the pint-sized letters, reminiscent of alphabet soup, were a tough sell internally.
"We agonized over the letters," says Ed Whitacre, the chairman and CEO of the combined company, who made the final call on the name and the logo.
He says marketing people finally convinced him that the new look was more evocative of the Internet generation: "They tell me it's more trendy and modern."
Whitacre obviously has to get out more.
Cingular will be sold under name of AT&T [USA Today]