Cingular or American Telephone & Telegraph Company? My 2p

It get's boring, I know. But after the flurry over AT&T's announcement that they will now step up their re-branding another notch in order to be eye-level to the uber-spin doctors from Apple for the launch of the iPhone, I cannot keep myself from making yet another comment on the branding debate: which one is better, AT&T or Cingular?

A lot has been argued and said about it (see e.g. here, here and here) but let's stick to one simple fact (OK, there'll be another one later): Millward Brown, the brand gurus who publish the annual "Brandz" ranking, something like the Forbes List (or the Times Rich List when you live in the UK) for brands showed that "Cingular" gained 39% year-on-year and slotted in at #70 with a brand value of $9.2bn. AT&T, well, didn't make the top 100. Even if it was on #101, it would mean that its value would be at least $4bn less than Cingular's.

What is REALLY concerning though is that the brand they abandon actually gained value to the tune the Cingular brand did (3rd biggest climber overall). The fact that the Cingular brand is younger, more dynamic, does not conjure up memories of the old wretched monopoly the old AT&T once was - well, I leave that to the real marketing freaks but you really cannot argue with that, huh?

To end it: here's what GigaOM's readers think: