AT&T launches its own sad retort to Verizon’s ads
Recently, Verizon released a slew of commercials that attacked AT&T by stating that it had five times more 3G coverage than the network that is home to the iPhone – and it’s true. Now, instead of spending money on improving its network, AT&T decided it would hit Verizon with a lawsuit for the misleading ads. The only problem is there is nothing misleading about the ads at all and AT&T makes the customer sound stupid in its lawsuit. AT&T contends that customers might misinterpret the ad as AT&T having little to no coverage at all, but in fact its EDGE coverage nearly blankets the entire country. Um, if anyone has used EDGE in the past year or two (bless your soul), you’d agree that it’s not something to brag about. At all. Since the lawsuit didn’t work, AT&T has decided to launch an ad campaign of its own.
A judge just laughed at the lawsuit and denied an injunction against Verizon. So what did Verizon do? It continued with its ad campaign! AT&T’s sad, wobbly-knee response came in the form of a public letter and a couple of commercials featuring Luke Wilson. Again, AT&T yaps on about its coverage and doesn’t address the 3G issue.
The funny thing is that Wilson mentions Chicago, San Francisco and New York City in the ads as being covered by AT&T. Having experienced AT&T’s network in San Francisco and NYC, I can safely say that the carrier has its head up its ass. In congested cities, calls get dropped, data doesn’t work (even when your phone shows full signal bars like the image above) and sometimes texts and voicemails don’t go through. Sometimes EDGE doesn’t work, either! My friend called my iPhone a “glorified iPod” in the city. I see it as more of a halfway-decent camera or paperweight, and it’s not even heavy enough for the latter, really.
It’s time for AT&T to stop bragging about its EDGE coverage or simultaneous voice and data capabilities and start fixing its network. EDGE isn’t going to cut it with feature phones and smartphones, and the ability to do simultaneous voice and data doesn’t mean anything when the network fails to adequately deliver it.
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[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Marc Flores, Digitalia. Digitalia said: AT&T launches its own sad retort to Verizon’s ads http://bit.ly/07xve2H [...]
The ads feature Luke Wilson, not Owen.
Bravo!! I couldn’t agree more … and thanks for finally locating AT&T’s head!
That’s Luke Wilson, not Owen Wilson.
Just an FYI for accuracy, that is Luke Wilson not Owen Wilson
Thanks for the heads up, everybody. I got the Wilson brothers confused and corrected it!
[...] AT&T Makes Poor Decisions Instead of spending money and expanding, updating and creating a stronger better infrastructure, AT&T decides to spend money on Ads defending poor infrastructure. AT&T has over 1,000 apps but a small 3G network and limited bandwidth. But Verizon can’t tell people via commercial. It confuses users. Bottom line, AT&T is not going to make a better AT&T system. Each commercial put out by AT&T is a raise in wireless fees and one less dollar to expand 3G network. (read more . . .) [...]
While I agree with your technological assessment of AT&T’s product given the saturation they’re experiencing with the iPhone on their networks. I disagree with your assessment of the effectiveness of the AT&T ads.
Its also naive to think a business should completely ignore an aggressive marketing attack by a competitor and pour all resources into the product. Unfortunately, sometimes in business you have to sell what you have even if you’re at a disadvantage.
I agree that AT&T shouldn’t just ignore Verizon’s ad campaign and that it should play up what little strengths it has at this point. However, AT&T’s new commercials seem a little flat and uninteresting when directly compared to Verizon’s attack ads. Here’s a nice editorial piece from Engadget that sums up how I feel about the Verizon/AT&T madness:
http://www.engadget.com/2009/11/13/editorial-hey-atandt-drop-lawsuits-not-calls/
In response to another comment. See in context »I’d counter that their advertising is hitting its mark. I see a difference in the audiences that these two carriers are attempting to attract right now.
Verizon’s ads highlighted by the “Droid Does” & “A Map for That” advertising are targeting highly technical people who are looking to heavily use the features of their phone, and demand high performance.
AT&T is focusing on the more mainstream user who may use some of the functionality, but isn’t considered a tech-savvy heavy user.
Part of the reason for this targeting maybe because AT&T already feels they’ve locked up the techie market with the iPhone, or that they understand these heavy users are what is killing their network in the areas you mentioned in your post.
If you want to check my take on the commercials: http://mgmtnow.com/carrier-ad-wars/
I’d guess people like yourself or the editors at Engadget would fall into the demographic Verizon is targeting, so its no coincidence those ads resonate with you while AT&T’s seem off.
In response to another comment. See in context »You’re absolutely right. I think that the carriers are mixing up its targets – consumers or techies? I just wrote a post on Boy Genius Report that shows how it should be done when targeting the consumers. As always, Apple (who would have known it would step in?) does it right.
http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2009/11/23/apple-backs-up-atts-ad-campaign-launches-two-commercials-tonight/
In response to another comment. See in context »[...] hilarious 3G ads November 23rd, 2009 | Tags: submitted by diesel828 [link] [190 comments] Read Full Story from Reddit Technology. Leave a comment Related Posts & [...]
[...] we’ve now seen AT&T’s attempt at striking back at Verizon’s ad campaign, I thought it would be appropriate to show you Apple’s own take on this whole advertising [...]
[...] they should be fixing their networks instead. AT&T initially tried to sue Verizon for its “There’s a map for that” ads, claiming that the ads were deceiving customers into believing that AT&T had little to no [...]
Also, the fact that EDGE, the lion’s share of AT&T’s data network, can’t do simultaneous voice and data either speaks more to AT&T’s hypocrisy than anything else.