Thursday, June 14, 2007

Duh! at&t Should Have Talked to Some Cable Guys


at&t is promoting U-Verse IPTV services in Connecticut from an Ice Cream truck outfitted with a flat panel HDTV showing off the service. at&t also is holding U-Verse block parties and free concert or movie nights. It sounds as though the new tack is being taken because mass media advertising is a mixed blessing when a company is in the middle of a network build. Apparently at&t has finally discovered that it creates problems for itself when it advertises new services that only are available in a portion of a service territory reached by the mass media where the ads run.

Potential customers call in to get it and then have to be told service isn't available in their neighborhood. That's why cablers used to send out people with door hangers block by block as networks were built out. They tended to use the same "micro" targeting as their networks successively were upgraded. at&t couldn't ask anybody who had ever done this before what the pitfalls would be? It's not like it would have cost any money to get the insight. It's a one-sentence question and a one-sentence answer.

No comments:

Many Winners and Losers from Generative AI

Perhaps there is no contradiction between low historical total factor annual productivity gains and high expected generative artificial inte...