Blogging jumps the shark on at&t ads
Yesterday Maryam and I were driving to Oakland’s airport when we passed by a HUGE billboard right in front of the Oakland Colliseum. This is one of the most trafficed billboards in the Western United States. I wish I had a picture (I wasn’t able to get my camera out in time).
It simply said:
Blogging
In huge type.
Delivered. In smaller type.
at&t’s logo was there too. It turned out this is one of the new at&t campaigns that they are spending a billion on. Hey, they could have gotten much more hype if they had just given a billion away to bloggers. Heck, give me a million or two and I’ll even switch to your blog tool! Sorry, Matt! :-)
Now I know the world is nutty.
More later, just had to tell you that in between interviews.
Powered By 
January 16th, 2006 at 1:47 pm
When I start getting “Make million$ blogging from home!” spam, I’m blaming Scoble ;)
January 16th, 2006 at 2:52 pm
I believe the same ad was posted in Times Square.
January 16th, 2006 at 2:55 pm
http://flickr.com/photos/davidking/83057291/ pictures here.
January 16th, 2006 at 2:55 pm
Robert, you’re great guns on the tech evangelism front, but leave the MarComm to others (*grin*). The ad isn’t stupid, it’s positioning. Given the recent trial ballons that the carriers have floated about differential pricing for traffic from major ISPs and bandwidth users, I see this as them telling customers: “We provide you the blogging experience.” Which is true because they own the pipe that delivers the content.
A bit similar to the way MS could say to Google’s customers, “Google’s search results. Delivered by Windows (and AT&T…)”
January 16th, 2006 at 2:57 pm
Time to invent Web3.0
Web2.0 -not cool anymore. The world has caught on.
January 16th, 2006 at 3:06 pm
I wish you had full text articles in your RSS feed. :(
January 16th, 2006 at 3:09 pm
Hmmm.. wait, I spoke too soon, it looks like my reader is only showing me the “description” section of your XML. Sorry about that, I should have looked further before I posted.
January 16th, 2006 at 3:39 pm
I doubt that at&t would get any good PR from bribing bloggers to be their shills.
January 16th, 2006 at 3:54 pm
Scoble, your blogging rants are unfocused hype. What’s the big deal with blogging, per se? It’s not new: the macintosh community had blogging before blogging was even a word: my first experience with a blog was O’Grady’s powerpage (http://www.powerpage.org) in 1997 or so. Sure, the technology has changed (you use web-based forms to upload content, there’s places for public comment, etc), but the medium is not new.
Blogging is an informal method of public communication.
Next, I find that the responses to blog entries are more important than the text of the blog itself.
Are you asking for a raise or something? You need to change your argument from “blogging is important”. What are you going to do once you understand that being an anti-Microsoft evangelist makes you more popular and read than being a Microsoft evangelist?
January 16th, 2006 at 4:32 pm
anon,
Ahhh, you johnny-come-lately.
I was into this informal method of public communication on a computer way before that. There was this guy called Tim Berners-Lee, and he had this thing where instead of using web forms or anything like that, you just used this markup language called HTML and it allowed you to publish all these things online.
Sure, it didn’t have a place for public comments and at the start you had to write the HTML markup language yourself, but the medium isn’t new, or even new to an Apple-history-revisionist.
January 16th, 2006 at 5:05 pm
Yes, all one billion was spent on one billboard, or in other words, Scobie is a fool. Robert, Apple had 80% the billboards around the Coliseum (hell, all of the Bay Area) for months and their iPod campaign totals much less than 1 bill.
January 16th, 2006 at 5:21 pm
The term “jumping the shark” has jumped the shark.
January 16th, 2006 at 5:37 pm
Goebbel, Scoble’s saying nothing like that. “one of the new at&t campaigns” doesn’t say “The New Billboard they spent $1bil on, man what a rip-off”.
On the billboard, interesting to see what reaction this will provoke in the lay community. Google (or MSN Search :P) for Blogging and you get a fairly mixed bag of results.
January 16th, 2006 at 5:56 pm
I saw the ad too on our buses here in LaCrosse,WI. I find it funning that I mention podcasting and people say yeah I herd about that or listen. I mention I blog too and the go hugh? Seems to me that podcasting has reached the main stream before blogging and bloggin has been online longer. What is up with that?
January 16th, 2006 at 6:15 pm
Response to 10: Hi, Cider. Did you respond to the message I wrote or did you just respond what you think I wrote?
this thing where instead of using web forms or anything like that, you just used this markup language called HTML and it allowed you to publish all these things online.
That’s what I was talking about.
but the medium isn’t new, or even new to an Apple-history-revisionist.
I said the medium isn’t new. And Apple-history-revisionist? Me?
The only thing my post had to do with Apple is this blog a guy named Jason O’Grady wrote well before there was any such word as “blog”. It happened to be about Apple, but as far as I know it wasn’t financed by or developed at Apple.
January 16th, 2006 at 6:32 pm
karan, I’m perfectly aware of what Scoble is saying: he is claiming a handful of silly bloggers could achieve more advertising than a large ad campaign. I get that. In my post is the inherent but unstated critique that Scoble has peddled, pimped, whored himself to advertise a ton of lousy iPod imitators for 3 years with zero success whereas Apple has had a very successful (and costly but much cheaper campaign than AT&Ts) without any PAID bloggers (which I thought he was against and/or had said paid bloggers aren’t as effective as independent ones. Hence, the assertion that just because he was driving on 880 the other day, he has no clue how effective this campaign will be, what forms it will take, and/or whether or not hiring his cheap, slutty ass to pimp the company would be effective since re-branding, the primary purpose of this campaign, requires exposing existing clients (not just a bunch of geek blog-readers) with the new image and goals of the company going forward.
Yes, my post skipped most of that, but Scoble knows what I’m talking about. I didn’t have to lay it out for him that he’s a cheap corner whore working International Blvd with no understanding of advertising and rebranding but just a cheap, foul perfume to sell called “blogging.”
January 16th, 2006 at 6:43 pm
Eastside Business would like to get our hands on some of those advertising dollars as well - it could help us expand our Microsoft and Tech sections as well as spread the good word about blogging and webcasting.
January 16th, 2006 at 6:49 pm
You guys are all funny. I didn’t realize I could get so much controversy going just by saying “give me the money.” Heheh.
Goebbels: out of thousands of posts made here how many have been about ANY MP3 player? 15? 20? Maybe 100 (if you count all the times I mentioned iPods)?
Yeah, I guess that’s whoring. Especially when I tell you I bought my wife an iPod instead of any other player.
>advertising and rebranding but just a cheap, foul perfume to sell called “blogging.”
Works for at&t!
Only Microsoft didn’t have to spend much money to get me and you come here voluntarily where you don’t look at at&t’s billboard voluntarily. At least not if you live in Oakland.
January 16th, 2006 at 7:03 pm
“out of thousands of posts made here how many have been about ANY MP3 player? 15? 20? Maybe 100 (if you count all the times I mentioned iPods)?”
The number has dropped since I have routinely kicked your ass and your company and others you have attempted to pimp continue to clearly fail. I admit that.
“Especially when I tell you I bought my wife an iPod instead of any other player.”
I’m fully aware that even you have enough reason, or at least can listen to you son’s reason, to make a good decision now and then. But that doesn’t make you not a whore.
“Works for at&t!”
Ahh, deflection. And hypocrisy. You can claim that blogging will save your soul because you’ve been doing it senselessly for years, but AT&T can’t. Fine.
“Only Microsoft didn’t have to spend much money to get me”
And? The question is: could giving you (and even 999 others) one million dollars be an effective way for SBC/AT&T to rebrand and revitalize their business? Anyone not smoking crack, and/or not whoring for “blogging”, would say, quite easily, NO!
“and you come here voluntarily”
and mock you as a fool. Yeah, that would be an effective way to advertise to me: foolishly give someone I consider a fool a million dollars to further prove he’s a whore! Brilliant!
“where you don’t look at at&t’s billboard voluntarily. At least not if you live in Oakland.”
Huh? Because I come here, it’s impossible for me to voluntarily or involantarily see a billboard? I come here for about 20 minutes while I would be insider anyway… How does that little bit of eyeball time invalidate massive outdoor, on air, on TV, on the internet advertising which, in fact, does include paid bloggers? It doesn’t. And by the way, I can look out the window while typing this and see 2 billboards. They aren’t AT&T’s but certainly I can be advertised to involuntarily while reading your tripe…. Your just to much of a geek and blogging geek to see the rest of the world going on around you.
January 16th, 2006 at 8:09 pm
Please don’t use the lame phrase “jump the shark”. Actual Happy Days fans can tell you that some of the best (and highest rated) Happy Days episodes came *after* Fonzi jumped the shark.
Besides, the existance of such a billboard should just tell you that providing a place for people to blog has become a basic service like web and email that every ISP must offer.
Jorgie
January 16th, 2006 at 8:53 pm
and mock you as a fool. Yeah, that would be an effective way to advertise to me: foolishly give someone I consider a fool a million dollars to further prove he’s a whore! Brilliant!
Not nice at all, not nice at all. You’re right, but keep the personal attacks on low and don’t turn this blog into a sewer.
Scoble makes plenty of mistakes and does plenty of shilling for his convicted monopolist employer. How he does this is obvious to all and a textbook on how Microsoft “competes”.
This blog is a light on Microsoft so the public can see its dirty works.
January 16th, 2006 at 9:55 pm
I didn’t have to lay it out for him that he’s a cheap corner whore working International Blvd with no understanding of advertising and rebranding but just a cheap, foul perfume to sell called “blogging.”
Gawd, good to have you back. Bit too harsh for my style, but I love it perfectly, even so.
January 16th, 2006 at 10:37 pm
I found it telling that the cell phones used on this season’s 24 are from Sprint, while at&t is left to advertise during the breaks.
If the cell phone carrier isn’t good enough for Jack Bauer it isn’t good enough for me.
January 16th, 2006 at 11:03 pm
Yes, I saw this on the way to Vegas as well in the middle of CA. This was funny since when I talked to the AT$T people at CES, they could not understand why and how could AT$T use blogs for their PR or to sell it as services (W2.0). Check my post and a pic of the ads. http://vassko.blogspot.com
vassil
January 16th, 2006 at 11:16 pm
BlogReader: did you see the Tablet PCs used on 24?
January 16th, 2006 at 11:52 pm
Comment No. 5: check out the latest A List Apart article =)
Goebbels, I have to say that despite Microsoft’s recent advertising attempts (”Start Something”), it’s been Scoble’s openness, along with various other things Scoble has pointed to, that has me convinced things are Microsoft are changing. I’ve only been reading for six months.
Blogging & the internet is changing the nature of advertising, so why won’t you admit it?
Scoble, keep up the good work, and ask for a pay rise some time =)
January 17th, 2006 at 2:47 am
What at&t doesn’t mention is that their service sucks. Long distance is dead, they are they same old phone company. I hate at&t and no amount of advertising, especially this lame campaign is going to change my opinion about them. Perhaps if they had a billboard that said “VOIP” Delivered or “IPTV” Delivered, but really “Blogging?” c’mon, they don’t create content, that’s like the power company claiming to deliver your computer because it supplies power. Power to Vonage, power to Word Press, Power to SKYPE, power to all the companies that actually deliver.
January 17th, 2006 at 8:59 am
that has me convinced things are Microsoft are changing.
Is that so? Hey, in that case, special price on this bridge in Brooklyn, reduced, must-sell-now. Song and dance and blogger smokescreens, all it takes to convince you that things are changing? Then the marketing puppets can count you as a smashing success, the overall picture is differing however; just talk to the CIOs on the Software Assurance front-lines.
And if blogs are what did it, then venture to Mini-Microsoft, the worst enemy is them, themselves, even the harshest press critics are mild in comparison to that self-whipping. But I would argue THAT’s true openness, telling like it is, without fear of being blacklisted or labeled. What you get on Scoble’s blog and the countless others like it, is only a bad photocopy of reality, filtered thru nose-level view marketing, posing as new frontier openness.
Blogging is just the latest wrinkle in Internet media, it will change and expand, it always does, and once you reduce the revolutionary hype triumphalism talk from the self-appointed incestuous toolmakers, it becomes all commodity adapted and industry-consolidated. Simple history will tell you that; just usual boom and bust to commodity cycle. Nothing new under the sun, just lottsa upper crusts making a killing offa selling the story and writing books, all Amway and MLM-style.
January 17th, 2006 at 9:11 am
Just in from the Media Bistro folks…
IDEA OF BLOGGING OVERSOLD (ADAGE)
Simon Dumenco: There is no such thing as blogging. There is no such thing as a blogger. Blogging is just writing-writing using a particularly efficient type of publishing technology. It’s just software, people! The underlying creative/media function remains exactly the same. WaPo: Schools warn teen bloggers. Riverfront Times: Video blogging, or vlogging, is taking the web to the next level.
http://www.adage.com/news.cms?newsId=47467
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/16/AR2006011601489.html
http://www.riverfronttimes.com/Issues/2006-01-11/news/feature.html
January 17th, 2006 at 9:40 am
[...] Blogging jumps the shark on at&t ads [...]
January 17th, 2006 at 11:47 am
I wish this blog had karma points like slashdot so I could give a +5 insightful to Chris’ message #28.
Mr. Scoble, does slashdot count as a web 2.0-ish or “blog” thing? I’m puzzled why “web 2.0″ is suddenly a “new thing” when these tools and implementations have really been around since the late 90s.
Is “web 2.0″ Microsoft’s sly rebranding of past innovations/functionality as if it were their own?
January 17th, 2006 at 12:49 pm
one thing
http://artivated.com
regards
January 17th, 2006 at 1:07 pm
Guzzard, I don’t get it.
Why would IPTV or VOIP be acceptable to you “if they don’t create content”
They don’t create the TV/Video content for IPTV and they certainly don’t create the voice conversations for VOIP.
But they run the network and the pipe to your home to DELIVER them. Just like blogging. I believe this is part of their “Your World. Delivered” campaign.
January 17th, 2006 at 4:53 pm
I am saying that they should offer these things as services. I am saying that they are *just* repackaging the same ol’ same ol’. They continue to worry more about image than service and quality. They are more of a NETWORK company, true, however delivering a BLOG, who cares. Combine the over-bearing ad campaign with something NEW! Overpriced, crap is what at&t is selling.
January 17th, 2006 at 4:54 pm
Plus, Scoble, Jumping the Shark is frakking lame.
January 17th, 2006 at 5:11 pm
“Goebbels, I have to say that despite Microsoft’s recent advertising attempts (”Start Something”), it’s been Scoble’s openness, along with various other things Scoble has pointed to, that has me convinced things are Microsoft are changing. I’ve only been reading for six months.”
In other words, you are a sucker for advertising. Why do I care? Scoble has NO decision-making ability, he has few high-level information or even contacts. He’s a marketer, and you’ve decided that since you like the guy, you like the company. Am I supposed to be impressed? I’m not.
“Blogging & the internet is changing the nature of advertising, so why won’t you admit it?”
No, it hasn’t. Advertising still wants to create an image for the consumer, it still wants to explain how its products or services work and are desirable to the consumer, it still wants to convince the consumer through flash, appeal, testimony, whatever that the consumer likes the product.
What we have here is a clear example of where blogging cannot achieve the purpose: one of the most massive rebrandings ever. (And let’s not forget: this is SBC which purchased some of AT&Ts assets renaming themselves AT&T; not AT&T.) Rebranding requires creating an image (literal and figurative) with the user and hammering over and over. There is no way even 10,000 bloggers could achieve what this very simple ad, in addition to many, many others can via billboards, direct mailers, magazine ads, tv ads, and numerous other advertising outlets (including blogging). What is clear is blogging is just one mode of advertising, but that it works in the same way as traditional advertising. (It may have particular strengths and weaknesses as any mode of advertising does have.)
But… just because the ad says “blogging”, it’s Scoble’s absurd theory that paying 1,000 bloggers 1 million dollars each would achieve a massive national and even multinational rebranding? Absurd. The purpose of the ad is primarily to say: remember SBC, remember AT&T, well we’re now one company, this is our new logo, this is a new tag line, we’ll be harking various services via the “Word. Delivered” tag (not just blogging) to try to create a new mission and image for our company going forward.
I do not know a single blogger that can reach all of the demographics that SBC must reach; I do not even imagine 10,000 bloggers put together have the same reach that SBC must achieve. And I think it’s clear that some silly bloggers typing away about SBC cannot achieve rebranding goals: make the audience aware of the new name, logo, and vision as well as visual ads.
So, Scoble, the alleged marketing wunderkind for Microsoft (when he is actually just a low-level tech evangelist who makes movies and writes poorly thoughtout blog entries) makes the silly mistake of claiming that SBC/AT&T is behind the times, wasting money on something that could be accomplished soley through blogging because the ad mentions “blogging” when “blogging” is in fact almost entirely irrelevent to the campaign.
So I’ll leave you and Robert with this simple question: are you asserting that this massive rebranding can be accomplished soley through blogs? And, is yes, are you aware of how irrelevent and foolish that makes you sound to anyone who knows a piss about advertising?
January 18th, 2006 at 11:46 am
On my way home from work, they have one of these billboards off of Montague Expressway (in Milpitas, Calif.) as you head onto the 880.
January 18th, 2006 at 12:12 pm
Maybe they were too focused on the Ampersand
It’s all over the blogosphere [Scoble] [Rogue] [AdRants] [etc]..but I thought I needed to add my 2 cents as well. You may have the biggest-most-hugest-earth-shattering ad budget the world has ever seen…but you have to
January 18th, 2006 at 2:03 pm
I saw the same bilboard (in Detroit) a few days ago but it wasn’t up for long. AT&T has replaced it with another bilboard but I forgot what the newer one has on it. Obviously the newer one didn’t capture my attention like the blogging one did.
January 18th, 2006 at 11:25 pm
>So I’ll leave you and Robert with this simple question: are you asserting that this massive rebranding can be accomplished soley through blogs?
If at&t gave out a billion to bloggers the press would go into a feeding frenzy. The people reached would be far more than just who reads my blog.
By the way, how did Google or Amazon happen? They don’t even advertise.
January 19th, 2006 at 4:17 pm
“If at&t gave out a billion to bloggers the press would go into a feeding frenzy.”
And? How the hell would that accomplish rebranding SBC? Where I live I’ve received two mailers, their are TV commercials every commercial break on most major channels, and many billboards, and many newspaper articles. And it’s about re-branding: solidfying the new image, not just a silly tizzy because they foolishly threw money at bloggers.
“By the way, how did Google or Amazon happen?”
Umm, several guys formed businesses based on millions of venture fund capital and opened for service. Is it your theory that SBC can provide cellphone, traditional phone, business services, internet access, cable access via a website or something?
“They don’t even advertise.”
Yes, they do. Jesus.
Each statement of yours gets progressively dumber and dumber.
January 19th, 2006 at 4:32 pm
By the way, I should add: isn’t it massively lame and pathetic to switch from saying that “blogs could do it” to “well, admittedly blogs would not do it, but it would create atizzy in traditional media outlets which would be both more impactful and larger than the relatively paltry effect of the bloggers”?
Aren’t you essentially admitting bloggers couldn’t do it? That traditional medias commentary on the blogs would do it?
Pathetic and foolish.
January 20th, 2006 at 12:55 am
Each statement of yours [Scobles] gets progressively dumber and dumber.
Yeah, I’ve noticed that too, downward spiral, but the weebles wobble, yet don’t fall down — ends up writing a book that sells out to the saps, making a major mint. Irony, that. But the progression of dumbness, is backpedaled and excused over with ‘don’t feed the trolls’. And merry merry onto the next new new thing.
January 20th, 2006 at 4:50 pm
Goebbels - What a dumb dick you are!
I would not be suprised if you and scobleizer are in bed together as all advertising/PR is hype for crap companies (or people in this case) want to make you think you need thier product,service (a blog is a communication service at it’s fundemental level). Your continued rants doing nothing more to raise the scobleizer hype.
Who’s the real idiot!
January 20th, 2006 at 5:07 pm
Hey Goebbels:
You weirdly assume that rebranding is all a numbers game. Who is AT&T trying to reach? Is it little Suzy going to school? The luddite parent? Out of town visitors?
Or maybe, just possibly, would it be better to reach key IT decisionmakers, early-adopter geeks, trendsetters, etc. Gee, you think maybe those sort of people pay attention to blogs? Just possibly?
Maybe if you spent a little less time foaming at the mouth, knee-jerking against Scoble, you’d actually take time to acknowledge some of the benefits of blogging as it pertains to PR (hint: there’s a lot there, despite the hype).
January 23rd, 2006 at 4:34 pm
Adam, since the bulk of SBC’s business is local telephone service and business data services it is everyone (not just old ladies, kids, etc…) in a large southwestern region of the U.S. primarily. Just reaching bloggers wouldn’t help them at all; they have to reach ALL current and possibly future customers.
January 29th, 2006 at 5:27 pm
Vaspers Spots “Blogging Delivered-AT&T” in Peoria!
February 22nd, 2006 at 9:20 pm
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March 5th, 2006 at 4:18 pm
[...] The news comes amidst a massive branding campaign by at&t to reposition itself as the nation’s provider of key services via billboards and newspaper ads that describe the company as “blogging delivered” and “photos delivered” . The campaign, which wraps up next month with “babies delivered,” seeks to revitalize the brand following a 2004 study that over 86% of adult males age 18-26 think that “AT&T” is some sort of pog. In an effort to appear more trendy, the company lowercased its namesake, but the results have been dismal at best. With SBC and now BellSouth under its belt, some analysts speculate that AT&T might be pursuing the holy grail of trendy: a palindrome. [...]
March 5th, 2006 at 8:37 pm
at&t might not get blogs …
But, they get what it means to be captains of industry - or, what it means to have a monumental rebirth as a new company. Yep, talking about the announced acquisition of BellSouth by at&t.
March 23rd, 2006 at 5:38 am
In the Philippines, too many companies try to sell *online* services using *offline* marketing tactics.
I see the US isn’t completely rid of such insanity.