Ad Spending
AT&T's $67 billion acquisition of BellSouth has short- and long-term repercussions for ad spending in the telecom category (now the fourth-largest in the U.S. at nearly $6 billion). In the short term, Cingular Wireless will be renamed AT&T Wireless, and the merged company would have to rebrand in BellSouth markets. SBC, which acquired AT&T and then assumed that venerable brand, is in the midst of a $1 billion rebranding campaign this will be merging three brands into one (MarketingVOX, 2007).
However, in the long term, spending may decline. AT&T and BellSouth spend about $3 billion combined on advertising, and AT&T now expects reduced ad expenses to be a major source of savings.
Newspapers would likely be the biggest losers, along with network and spot TV. Also, the Yellow Pages business is expected to be shaken up, AT&T and BellSouth control $6 billion of the $15 billion spent last year on Yellow Pages advertising; they recently purchased yellowpages.com for $100 million and will likely move from paper to online (MarketingVOX, 2007).
Marketing Tactics
AT&T Inc. on Wednesday took the first steps to more fully integrate wireless into its sales and marketing bundles. Essentially, AT&T is refocusing its marketing engine post-BellSouth merger, to sell a unified wireless-wire line portfolio. For instance, a combined sales force will offer both wireless and wire line service, rather than the two arms of the business remaining separate entities (Seals, Tara, 2007).
Billing convergence will be the next step. The RBOC said the full suite of both portfolios will be available on a single contract for midsized and large business by the end of the year. Also, customers may be able to make a single revenue commitment that includes both wire line a ...