"Sure, Verizon provides better service, but we provide services you'll never use... and that's why you should use AT&T.

The Worst Ad Campaign – Ever.

Every now and then something comes along that’s so annoying, so irritating, so revolutionarily asinine that the world is forced to stop–if only for a moment–to reflect on the complete and utter stupidity of it all.  AT&T, congratulations–you may have lost major market share to Verizon, but you’ve won the Alister & Paine Award for Worst Ad Campaign – Ever.

Here is AT&T’s most recent advertising campaign summed up in nineteen words: “Sure, Verizon provides better service, but we provide services you’ll never use… and that’s why you should use AT&T.”

The entire platform for AT&T’s recent 3G attacks against Verizon are irrelevant to the vast majority of mobile-users–we simply aren’t browsing the internet and talking on the phone at the same time.  To be honest, until AT&T’s recent 3G crusade against Verizon I had no idea my Verizon-powered Droid couldn’t surf the web while I was on the phone–because I never do both at the same time.  Either I’m surfing the web or I’m texting or I’m talking.

Aside from being a completely irrelevent campaign that doesn’t address any of the issues brought up by Verizon, AT&T practically tells America a bold-faced lie about their services.  The fact is, Verizon set the bar incredibly high with a reliable and far reaching network while AT&T decided to focus on selling iPhone’s and roll-over minutes.  Now everyone’s redirecting their attention to network-quality and AT&T simply can’t compete.

AT&T, please–I’m begging you–pull the campaign and invest those marketing dollars in building a reliable infrastructure. Cut the holier-than-thou crap and consider for a moment that your customers might actually be the right people to listen to, not your so-called creative team whose latest concept is anything but genius.


There’s no denying AT&T got their asses kicked on the wireless playground this year—Verizon’s rebuttal to ‘There’s an app for that’ will be hitting our list of favorite campaigns of 2009 (see above left), while AT&T’s original commercial is long forgotten. Verizon’s CMO recently took the stand and told America why they’re not backing down from the lawsuit pursued by the school-yard bully AT&T has positioned itself to be (see above right).