I’ve been gone for a bit between AdTech and general work overload and have had to let a lot of interesting Latino marketing stories pass me by in that time. One marketing story really caught my eye, though, so even though it’s not Latino-related, I thought I’d share. File this under “What the hell are they thinking?”

Though I am probably one of Cingular’s least satisfied customers (consistent overbilling “not their problem”, three broken phones and dropped calls galore) I must say that killing their brand is not a good idea. AT&T is not a sexy brand. It’s not even a brand, in my opinion. It’s like Sears: it’s just always been there.

While Sears has vamped up marketing in recent years, particularly in the Latino market, AT&T is, to me, a dead (non) brand. If this isn’t about “ego” than I have no other explanation. Read on…then pull out your hair.

SAN FRANCISCO (AdAge.com) — It cost $4 billion to turn it into one of the best known names in the country, a future-forward, dynamic brand with a strong connection to young consumers and a share lead in the wireless marketplace. Yet, in 2007, Cingular will be tossed aside like an old sock.Not only is AT&T — in the throes of acquiring Cingular owner BellSouth –planning to ditch the Cingular name and ubiquitous, sprightly orange jack, but it will replace it with its own stodgy moniker, renaming the division AT&T Wireless. Such a move could conjure up images of the rotary dial and cause so much confusion that experts estimate it may take another $2 billion in marketing expenses to explain the changes to consumers.

AT&T argues that the $4 billion spent building Cingular — it will lay out around $1 billion this year alone — won’t be wasted, because, in the words of spokesman Michael Coe, it has “created a brand that has led to a customer base which is the largest in the U.S.” The company also claims that the single moniker for all AT&T services will “eliminate customer confusion and make a much more elegant solution.”

CONTINUE READING at AdAge

A funny (or not so funny, depending on how you look at it) story in the NYT today about my hometown’s new soccer team, its name and the harsh lesson in branding its organizers have had to stomach. At a time when cities are forming soccer leagues solely to satisfy a Latino market need, it’s pretty amusing when the name of the team itself isolates — even infuriates — the very market it’s meant to woo:

HOUSTON, Jan. 26 — What better way to honor the brash origins of this city, the owners of Houston’s new professional soccer franchise reasoned, than to name their team “Houston 1836,” a nod to the year when two entrepreneurial brothers from New York arrived here to build a city atop the swampy bayous of southeast Texas.

Many Latinos in Houston, though, greeted the unveiling of the team’s name this week with a shudder. Eighteen thirty-six also happens to be the year that a group of English-speaking interlopers waged a war of secession that resulted in Mexico’s loss of Texas, ushering in more than a century of violence and discrimination against Mexicans in the state.

Read the whole NYT article here. Highly recommended.

Happy Friday!

Tags: latino marketing, soccer,hispanic marketing,branding