mLife.com Turns Out To Be Boring Old AT&T
from the nice-try dept
Well, for the past week or so some people I know have been debating just how lame whatever mlife turned out to be would be. If you hadn’t noticed, there have been a ton of mysterious commercials on TV about it, and (at least in San Francisco) billboards trying to drum up interest. Now that we find out it’s just the rebranding of AT&T Wireless, it’s confirmed as a lame advertising ploy by Ogilvy & Mather to drum up interest in buying mobile phone service from AT&T. This other article (further down) suggests that the ad campaign will also focus on belly buttons. Um. Right. Next? Update: Well, okay, here’s an article with even more details if you haven’t had enough yet. I guess the strategy is getting them press coverage. Another Update: The best theory I had heard earlier this week was from Dennis, who said that he thought mLife was really MetLife, especially since they used the same color blue. Apparently, he wasn’t the only one who thought so. MetLife is suing AT&T Wireless over the mLife campaign. AT&T Wireless’s response, though, is priceless: “Last time we checked, everyone is still free to use the thirteenth letter of the alphabet.”
Comments on “mLife.com Turns Out To Be Boring Old AT&T”
If they worked so hard
…to keep it secret why did they issue a press release 2 days before the launchof the campaign. That seems to defeat the the whole buildup. Sure, very few people will actually see the release, but still.
Yawn
Yeah, I figured that mlife wasn’t anything. Speaking of pointless, did you notice that the URL for the news story is zdnet.com.com? So cnet (who apparently owns zdnet now) owns com.com. What exactly is the point of that? Do they want to support alt.swedish-chef.com.com.com?
Re: Yawn
Heh. Yeah, the CNet folks bought com.com a few months ago and started using it last week. I’ve been making fun of them (privately) for a while about it. It seems kinda pointless, but they have their reasons for it, which they stand by.