AT&T and Verizon “diss fight” finally fizzles out

Well, this is nice to see. After months and months of petty sniping between AT&T and Verizon through advertising campaigns, AT&T seems to have taken “the high road” and backed off first. Oh, and it has had a bit of a rebrand for its new campaign.

What’s this about sniping?

Verizon started this whole thing off in the run up to releasing the Droid. As preparation for its competitor for AT&T’s iPhone, Verizon released some very pointed ads slating AT&T’s wireless coverage and the iPhone itself (you can see our report on that here).

AT&T responded with it’s own ad campaigns, and even started legal proceedings to get Verizon to back off.

But there seems to have been a shift of thinking over at AT&T. Rather than spend massive amounts of money responding to claims made by Verizon, AT&T is retooling its branding and advertising efforts to accentuate the positive things about its network, and leave this whole nasty spat behind it. Mobiledia quotes Esther Lee, AT&T’s senior vice president for brand marketing and advertising, saying “there’s so much innovation happening at the company that I think people don’t know…e e spend an average $18 billion to $19 billion a year on our network, our technology and our inventions in order to drive the future of how people are going to live on our network.”

What’s the new campaign?

It’s called “Rethink Possible” and is all about showing customers the different and exciting things they can do with AT&T, rather than showing Luke Wilson throwing stuff onto the floor. Here’s an example:

What we think?

Bravo, AT&T. It’s about time, frankly. Attack advertising may be amusing in the short term, but it tends not to work out.

It’s just damn unfortunate that the campaign it’s gone with now is kind of watery and low impact. Ah well.