The Washington Post’s Kim Hart had a superior write-up of the impending iPhone launch this weekend. Less than a week away from the iPhone hitting the market, and people are just going ga ga (including my Twitter friend Ike)! At the time I drafted this, Technorati had

171,136

different posts referring to the iPhone. Wow!

I remember when Cingular first announced the iPhone in January, many industry pundits said it would not work well. Verizon did a good job of discreetly leaking that it had rejected the iPhone (whoops).

One has to give AT&T credit for their use of the iPhone’s launch. Once they saw the groundswell surrounding the debut of this exciting unit, they reacted… quickly. Not an easy thing to do for a Goliath of this size. Here are some of the intelligent moves AT&T made, and the corresponding results:

• Accelerating the Cingular rebrand to the “new” AT&T in time for the iPhone launch. Prior to 1 million units getting booked, AT&T wasn’t going to role the name over until 2008
• The excitement has successfully buried the black-eye of the former AT&T Wireless. Specifically, the same AT&T wireless company existed three years ago, which was absorbed by the Cingular brand, and now has reverted back to being AT&T wireless. Confused yet?
• A very popular brand — Cingular — has gone into the night without a whimper. Why? The iPhone.
• AT&T has successfully leveraged the Steve Jobs iWhatever hype factor to instill a sense of excitement about the AT&T brand. Yeah, that’s right. Excitement and AT&T in the same sentence.
• Compliments of iPhone exclusivity, AT&T’s managed to make Verizon Wireless, Sprint and T-Mobile look slow and unable to compete.

Game Changer?

AT&T Chairman and CEO Randall Stephenson told the telecom industry last week that AT&T was now a wireless company, and that the iPhone was a game changer that was going to lead the company into the new wireless broadband world. Stephenson rightly pointed out that devices like the iPhone allow users to determine the content they want (yes, YouTube included), and that AT&T’s job was to enable the user-generated content era.

This was a really intelligent move that helped position AT&T ahead of Verizon and the cable cos as the leading telecom company serving the new media community. Similarly, Kim’s article this Saturday highlighted how it’s no longer about the network, now it’s about the device and the functionality. It seems that the new era of portable social media is upon us, and Steve Jobs/AT&T is ushering it in.

Of course Kim also points out that if the phone doesn’t work well, the negative outcry will also be very, very strong. But somehow, I think it won’t hurt AT&T that badly. I mean were used to these failures: AT&T cable, AT&T Wireless version 1, AT&T credit cards, AT&T PCs, AT&T registers (NCR), and AT&T credit cards. What’s one more failure?

The hype is already reaching a frenzied state. [H]Enthusiast notes that the hype will only get louder as the phone launches. Just more proof that Apple and AT&T have pulled a major marketing coup. I get the feeling that this product launch will be one for the books.

Last week Andrea Morris posted a negative story about AT&T. I realize today’s story may seem contrary. Each author on the Bin has their own opinion. In the spirit of transparency and blogging, we let authors post what they want even if views differ. It always comes back to offering a meaningful discussion.

This week Michele Capots will publish on Tuesday instead of Friday. Our weekly interview will run on Thursday and Blogs of Fire will run on Friday. If you have any questions or suggestions about the Buzz Bin, please feel free to contact me at geoff [at] livingstonbuzz [dot] com.