Cingular Comes to N.Y. Bearing Orange Umbrellas and M&M's

The New York Times ^ | July 2, 2002 | STUART ELLIOTT

[Willie Green]

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.

CINGULAR WIRELESS is hoping that its risky and expensive effort to break into the crowded New York market will be received more like the return of the Dodgers to Brooklyn than the resumption of alternate-side-of-the-street parking after a holiday weekend.

Cingular, the nation's second-largest provider of wireless telephone services, plans to spend about $20 million on the extensive effort. The campaign, which begins this week with elements that include print advertisements, commercials, a dedicated Web site, promotions and retail marketing, is tailored to the tastes and "all right, already" tone of New Yorkers.

New York icons like taxicabs, subway tokens, the Statue of Liberty, pizzas and manhole covers will play prominent roles in the ads, along with sayings like "We would have been here earlier, but we got stuck in traffic."

The campaign's budget would be hefty for a national campaign, the equivalent of what Chrysler spent last year to advertise its Voyager minivans, according to CMR, a division of Taylor Nelson Sofres that tracks ad spending. But such lavish spending on so elaborate a campaign is necessary, according to executives at Cingular and its agency, BBDO Worldwide, because New York is the country's biggest wireless market and is already home to Cingular's principal national competitors, among them AT&T Wireless; Nextel; Sprint; Verizon, which is the biggest wireless provider; and VoiceStream.

"New York is a `go big or go home' market, so you're not going to miss us," said Daryl Evans, vice president for advertising and marketing communications at Cingular.

The entry into the New York area comes 18 months after the introduction of the Cingular brand by the BellSouth Corporation and SBC Communications to replace 11 regional brands like BellSouth Mobility and Pacific Bell Wireless. Cingular, which is based in Atlanta, and now operates in 43 of the 50 biggest metropolitan areas, spent $411.3 million nationally last year, according to CMR. By comparison, Verizon spent $644.2 million on its national ads and AT&T Wireless spent $522.4 million, CMR reported.

Typically, to arrive so late to a marketing party is injurious, even fatal, to the prospects for a brand to survive, much less thrive. However, the lengthy lag for Cingular may not be as disadvantageous in wireless services as it would in categories like packaged goods.

"Even though the New York market is very dominated by AT&T Wireless and Verizon, if Cingular can sufficiently differentiate itself, there is an opportunity there," said Knox Bricken, senior analyst for the wireless communications practice at the Yankee Group, a consulting company in Boston.

"New Yorkers are known to be demanding in terms of the quality of service they receive in wireless," she added, particularly in the realms of coverage and price. So a newcomer could be welcomed by disgruntled New Yorkers who have already found other carriers wanting or are looking for the hottest new product.

In interviews last week, the executives at Cingular and BBDO, a division of the Omnicom Group that is handling the Cingular account from its Atlanta and New York offices, said they had developed the campaign with those distinctions in mind.

"Wireless phones are part of the fabric of New York, and most people in the market have them," Mr. Evans of Cingular said. "Something we recognize is that New York is a `switcher' market, which brings to the fore the type of products we sell, the type of innovations we offer and the attitude we have."

So, for example, the campaign plays up a promotional offer of a new Motorola handset, the V70 model, which is billed as "now in New York, only from Cingular." The ads rewrite the national campaign's focus on "self-expression" to proclaim, "The company that champions self-expression nationwide is now in the most expressive city on earth."

"Attitudinally, it's very New York-oriented, as it should be," said Charlie Miesmer, vice chairman and senior executive creative director at BBDO New York. "And the more humorous you get, the better it works."

"If this were any other city, we'd be worried" by the head start the competition has attained, he added, "but we're the talking-est city on earth."

As part of its marketing push, Cingular plans to open 55 stores this month in metropolitan New York, with another 45 by the end of the year. The flagship store is at 575 Fifth Avenue, at 47th Street, designed to resemble a cafe, complete with upholstered chairs and a so-called Live Bar where products and services can be sampled.

There will also be attention-getting promotions like giveaways of packages of M&M's in the Cingular orange color, orange Cingular umbrellas on rainy days and make-believe business cards with snappy sayings by Jack, the stylized dotted X that is the Cingular brand symbol. Some examples: "Want to find tickets to `The Producers'? Me too." and "Do not read this. Wow. Reverse psychology actually works."

Cingular will also wrap ads around double-decker Gray Line tourist buses, some of which will "pull over to the Cingular store and a quintessential New York celebrity gets on and gives a tour," said John B. Osborn, executive vice president and director for integrated marketing at BBDO New York. He declined to identify them, but look for personalities like Joan Rivers.

"Everything is designed around creating a Cingular sensation," Mr. Osborn said.

A love of puns . . . so New York. A disdain for puns . . . so New York, too.

[RightWhale]

Yet another telecomm player runs out into the middle of the road in heavy traffic.

[Poohbah]

I wish them luck.

They do look like they're trying to play to their strengths, unlike some of the more inane marketing campaigns I've seen over the years.