On New Year’s Eve, the new-and-improved AT&T that was created by the $16.5 billion merger of SBC Communications and the old AT&T kicked off a major new re-branding campaign at a projected cost of “hundreds of millions of dollars.” The campaign, built around a new logo the company unveiled in late November as well as music from popular rock band Oasis, features (among other things) huge, two-page color spreads in major media publications and the following tagline: “Dream meets delivery. Promise meets performance. It’s time you meet the new AT&T.” If you’ve picked up a newspaper or watched a college bowl game this week, you’ve seen the ads.

Back in November, the company explained how the new logo fit into the evolving corporate strategy. According to AT&T, the new logo was designed to look more three-dimensional, “representing the expanding breadth and depth of services that the new AT&T family of companies provides to customers.” The lowercase type was chosen for “at&t” in the logo because “it projects a more welcoming and accessible image.”

What do you think - is AT&T finally thinking outside the sphere or not?

More on the AT&T logo:

New AT&T logo analysis [RussellBeattie.com]
New AT&T logo is live [Return of Design]
A new face, not unlike the old one [Scott Bradner]

Spewing the new AT&T logo [Typophile]

On page A2 of today’s Wall Street Journal (sorry, print edition only), Nikhil Deogun has written an incisive case study of how Coca-Cola squandered a seemingly insurmountable lead over PepsiCo in a span of just eight years. In 1998, Coca-Cola’s market cap was $220 billion and the company’s stock price was trading in the high-$80s. Fast forward eight years, and Coca-Cola’s stock price has plummeted to near the $40 mark. Worse yet, three weeks ago, Coke’s market cap for the first time in history fell below that of PepsiCo’s (now at $98 billion). As Nikhil explains, “Coke still outsells Pepsi worldwide by more than a 2-to-1 margin. But in the eyes of the stock market, Pepsi, which also owns Frito-Lay, Tropicana and Gatorade, is the real thing.”

So where did Coke go wrong? Well, the company simply made too much money selling Coca-Cola and scoffed at efforts by rivals to sell non-carbonated drinks like juices, teas and sports drinks. (Yeah, Coca-Cola now sells Dasani water and KMX Energy Drink, but how long did that take?)

Sounds familiar. In fact, the way Nikhil describes it, it sounds an awfully lot like the innovator’s dilemma proposed by Clayton Christensen in 1998:

“It is a classic conundrum for business titans: How much money and attention should be focused on a new, but growing, operation that is far less profitable than the core business? […] The whole Coke system is geared to selling soda, which has been a great living for more than a century. The profit margins on selling other drinks pale in comparison.”

In this case, it wasn’t a technological innovation (i.e. better, fizzier soft drinks) that doomed Coke. It was a business model innovation (becoming a “total beverage company”). As Nikhil points out, the members of Coke board are probably too old (average age 66) to “have their fingers on the pulse of youth” anymore. However, it’s unlikely that even a youngish board of directors would have made a successful transition to the new business model - the profits were simply too great selling Old Coke.

[photo credit: “Amongst Enemies” via Flickr]

In today’s Wall Street Journal, there’s a book review of Notes From Toyota-Land, a first-hand account of one American engineer’s experience of working within a fictional Japanese corporation called Nizumi. As might be imagined, there’s a bit of culture shock from Day 1: the writer (Darius Mehri) is greeted by company employees lined up, military-style, shouting corporate slogans, and wearing hats used by Japanese soldiers during World War II.

It doesn’t get any better from there:

“In his first year at the company, Mr. Mehri’s boss gives him a document to deepen his understanding of how to function effectively. When it does not make much sense to Mr. Mehri, he turns to a colleague for help. “It means nothing,” comes the response. Nizumi is like a labyrinth. When you walk in, you can not walk out. At best, you become stupid, at worst, you lose your life.”

At every step of the way, Japanese workers are forced to sacrifice any kind of personal identity to the identity of the corporation. Participation at all corporate events is mandatory and enforced. Even after-work social life - such as it exists - must somehow be related to improving efficiency and productivity at work.

Could this quite possibly be the least innovative work environment in the world? If you have your own war stories about stifling work environments that snuff out innovative thinking, feel free to comment or send email.

UPDATE: If you check the reviewer comments on Amazon, it turns out that the book is not based on Toyota, as one might assume from the book title. (Even the Wall Street Journal reviewer assumes the book is about Toyota) Instead, it’s based on Hino Motors, “a small 60-year-old facility on the outside of Tokyo.”