Cingular is now the New AT&T.

Starting Monday, Jan. 15, AT&T Inc. is launching a new multi-media campaign to begin transitioning the Cingular brand to AT&T in advertising and customer communications, throughout Web sites and nationwide retail stores, and on company buildings and vehicles.

“Around the world, our customers recognize the AT&T brand for meaningful innovation, a commitment to customer service, high quality and exceptional reliability,” said Edward E. Whitacre Jr., chairman and CEO of AT&T. “AT&T, BellSouth and Cingular are now one company, and going to market with our services under one brand is the right thing to do.”

“Services are converging and the lines between wireless and wireline are increasingly blurred,” said Boyd Peterson, analyst, Yankee Group. “Customers want simplification. By uniting the three company names into one, AT&T has simplified its message to the marketplace.”

While the AT&T logo will be prominent in all advertising and communications, the ads will initially include a transitional graphic with both the AT&T and Cingular logos. The co-branded element will help underscore the association of the two companies and transfer Cingular’s strong brand equity to the new AT&T. During the transition, the campaign will integrate popular imagery, phrases and icons from Cingular’s traditional advertising, including the “raising the bar” tag line, the “Jack” character and the color orange.

Each transition campaign element will conclude with the Cingular and AT&T logos coming together while an announcer states that “Cingular is now the new AT&T.” The broadcast spots will conclude with an animation in which the “Jack” character appears to “skywrite” the AT&T globe.

The campaign will kick off with several creative executions called “Raising It Higher,” which morphs Cingular’s familiar “raising the bar” tag line and imagery into the AT&T globe. The first version of this creative execution is called “Grain,” which shows a combine harvesting wheat and appears to be drawing the Cingular five bars, but as the picture zooms out, the AT&T globe comes into focus. Both broadcast TV and print executions are scheduled to start the week of Jan. 15.

Additional spots called “Jets” and “Cars” will start appearing in the coming weeks. Additionally, over the coming months, AT&T will add new creative executions. The brand ads will be complemented soon by call-to-action product ads that will carry similar transitional branding elements. As part of the re-branding initiative, approximately 2,000 nationwide company-owned wireless retail outlets and store kiosks will be transitioned over the coming year with AT&T-branded signage. Additionally, the approximately 15,000 personnel in these stores and kiosks will begin wearing AT&T-branded apparel in the coming months.