Fiona Carter was one of the few AT&T execs I had any respect for. The last time she spoke at a town hall she told the others the truth. They didn't listen and things got worse. Her sudden departure tells me that she concluded that AT&T was harming her personal brand and that she had to leave.
What do you think?
Don't lose sleep over Fiona, pretty sure she will just do just fine, onto the next big executive office some where.
Putting lipstick on a pig won't make an ounce of difference. I like the Lily ads, but that doesn't change my perception on all the c-ap that goes on around here. Don't expect anything less from our customers, they are not dumb.
Bottom line is she stunk at her job. AT&T "brand" is in the toilet and should be flushed. Start over.
There is no "inherent value" in the name. People don't care. People certainly don't come tripping over themselves to do business with us because of it.
Change is not going to happen, until Stinkey, all the officers, and the entire board is blown-up. In other words....it will never happen, because they have each others’ back. I can’t believe Elliot allowed everyone to stay, except Howdy Doodie. Funny that he was thrown overboard. Elliot should have cleaned house, when they had the chance
The one thing ATT's C suite can't tolerate is any kind of research or feedback that tells them how the public really feels about the ATT brand, and how far perceptions have fallen since SBC bought it. That's because if they did, they'd have to face up to how horrible a job they're doing running the company. That's like Kryptonite to them. So while someone like FC might occasionally pass a negative comment about how the brand image needed to be updated, she was also careful to constantly tell them how "powerful" and "positive" the ATT brand is to the public (even though it won't be long now until ATT passes Comcast on its way down). How could she say otherwise? If she told the truth, it would have been the same as calling herself a failure. No loss here.
She was just OK
She was completely useless. During an employee town hall last year, she complained that the company’s brand was stodgy and old and the marketing wasn’t helping that. I’m sorry, weren’t you the Chief Brand Officer? Wasn’t it your job to do something about that? Or were you too wrapped up in changing the logo font and getting employees to wear branded clothing with lame-a^@ slogans like “more thing for your thing”? Just because you get Lena Waithe to voice your commercials, it doesn’t automatically make your company “woke” and appealing to millennials.
Fiona commissioned a project to come up with a name and logo for a new product line the company would launch. But in the end, she was deluded enough about the company’s brand reputation and decided that if it was named “AT&T TV,” subscribers would flock to it because so many people just looooove AT&T to the point of throwing their money at something because it’s named after the company.
America hates AT&T. Monopoly, Bad Customer Service, Hidden Fees, and I am getting screwed feeling.
Agree with the part about her concern for her personal brand. She certainly had plenty of that. The rest, not so much. She invested millions in market research to determine that the ATT logo should be upper-case letters and the globe should be slightly flattened. And exactly what shade of blue it should be. She recommended at a town hall meeting that ATT employees buy and wear clothing with the ATT logo on it to advertise the brand. And somehow through all this managed to find time to have endless pictures taken with Hollywood celebs while preaching constantly about diversity and inclusion. Yes, we are all sad to see such enlightened and dynamic leadership depart, but we can take comfort in the knowledge that empty suits are not hard to find, especially for a company like ATT that specializes in it.
OMG! Not her personal brand! You mean really employed at AT&T to make pretty blonds feel better about their image, and not serve the customers to build a lucrative business model?!? I wish I had known that beforehand. /s
Her message was not wrong in parts but she was completely ineffective at making any change. She was an empty suit.