Cingular transition to AT&T brand to start next week

So long, Cingular.
The wireless carrier’s parent company announced that it will begin dismantling the Cingular Wireless L.L.C. brand next week with a series of broadcast TV and print ads proclaiming to consumers that “Cingular is now the new AT&T.”
“AT&T [Inc.], BellSouth [Corp.] and Cingular are now one company, and going to market with our services under one brand is the right thing to do,” said Edward Whitacre Jr., chairman and CEO of AT&T.
A little more than two years after Cingular acquired the former AT&T Wireless Services Inc. and began to stamp out that brand, the company will essentially see the reverse happen. According to AT&T, the new campaign will initially feature a “transitional graphic with both the AT&T and Cingular logos” and borrow some of the imagery, the color orange and the “raising the bar” tagline from Cingular’s advertising as it tries to “underscore the association of the two companies and transfer Cingular’s strong brand equity to the new AT&T,” as the parent company put it. The co-branding will continue until customer awareness levels are high, AT&T said. The color orange will stick with AT&T’s wireless services, even after the Cingular name is gone.
AT&T did not provide images of its planned advertisements.
AT&T also said that about 2,000 company-owned retail stores and kiosks will be re-branded over the coming year, and employees will begin wearing AT&T-branded apparel in the coming months. Even sooner, Cingular customers will start hearing the AT&T name on Cingular voice greetings and begin seeing related messages in their bills.
AT&T estimated that about 20 percent of the operating expense savings from its acquisition of BellSouth will come from moving the three operations to a single brand.