Hey AT&T, 1990 Called and they want their advertising back

Erm...wtf does "Dream meets delivery. Promise meets performance." mean to you and I?

So, I'm struggling this morning with the fact that I have incredible writer's block, and, lo and behold, Chris hands me an inspiration.

AT&T took out this big-ass ad in the Wall Street Journal that says absolutely nothing about anything. A huge waste of ink and trees. I imagine it going down this way: Some fancy pants ad exec delivered some dumbass spiel to AT&T that convinced them, somehow, that this 'messaging' was "right on target" and that it would be good for their "brand". Some unimaginative, ill-informed AT&T marketing director signed off on it and sent it into the WSJ. At the WSJ, the advertising sales/traffic people are thinking 'cha-ching', while the copy layout people are thinking 'erm?' and no one really gets how much they are polluting the system with this bunk.

Alas, it is badvertising like this that pays for journalism to exist, is it not? Hmmmm. Seems like a scary, vicious circle to me. And tell me who really benefits from all of this?

In the end, I still don't know what it is that this new AT&T is supposed to be all about, what the heck they are are truly delivering (btw...it took me a while, but that swell graphic above means "Your World Delivered"...k...), how and to whom.

I mean, my world delivered? What does that mean? Seriously, why didn't they just say,

"We had to spend the rest of the advertising budget alotted this year or else we would have to deal with cuts in 06. Thank you for listening. We certainly don't."

or

"Eff whitespace. Blackspace is the new Whitespace. If you don't 'get' this ad, eff you, too."

Damn, I should be working on Madison Avenue...