Advertising, ad campaigns, ad agencies, and the people that make it happen

With the news today that AT&T is about to begin the largest advertising campaign in its history as it absorbs Cingular Wireless into the AT&T brand, with a series of spots, including both the AT&T and Cingular logos and integrating the imagery, phrases and icons from Cingular's traditional advertising, including the "Raising the bar" tagline, the "Jack" character and the color orange (meaning we can look forward to more really bad telecom advertising, but at least, there’ll only be one brand to ignore) ….  I have a couple of questions… Didn’t they just spend a few billons rebranding BellSouth as AT&T in the 22-state service area of the former Baby Bell? And didn’t AT&T's $80 billion acquisition of BellSouth in December rank as the largest telecommunications merger in U.S. history? Which actually leads me to a third, and what I consider to be the most puzzling question of all… Wasn’t it just twenty years or so ago that AT&T was broken up, because it was considered to be a monopoly, and by creating the eight “baby bells” there would be much more competition in the market place, thereby driving prices down and improving service? Although, come to think about it… That’s what they said about cable TV… I guess monopolies make sense, if you own the monopoly… Isn’t capitalism great?

.

.

And they said if I sign up for the phone, TV, wireless, snail mail, 200 minutes for ten years package, they won't merge with anyone else... 'Cos there's no one else left!