And so begins the next-largest brand/identity change for at&t since, well, at&t.

On Monday, Cingular, the cute jax-persona that made me think that a new brand CAN exist and prosper (and subsequently change this former at&t wireless customer’s opinion of the company) will change once again to become what made many customers unhappy in the first place: at&t.

While AT&T Wireless is long gone, the name consitutes such a horrid history in my mind. I grew up in business watching AT&T become a conglomerate, get deregulated, then try to claw and scratch it’s way back to exactly where it started. Amazing.

I tend to fancy myself a brand student for life. I am always willing (and quite able in most cases) to learn the brand process and why the decisions being made (at the cost of over a billion dollars, by the way) make customer sense. This is one of those times where having experience inside the rooms where these decisions are made pays no dividends.

I’m sure someplace in a room on the 74th floor of a beautiful corporate palace there’s a marketing executive who did a great job convincing the uppers of how this should be done (with, of course, a great deal of expensive help from their agency), but as a former customer, I will now be assured of staying exactly that: a former customer.

So - for after all of the work in “raising the bar”, thanks for letting down the brand.