Advertising Age is reporting that AT&T is “undertaking an ambitious rebranding effort under the banner of “Rethink Possible” to reposition itself as a “lifestyle company”. In other words, AT&T is implicitly declaring that it is losing the marketing positioning battle in the minds of consumers and wants to try something else to retain and gain customers.

Similarly, last month, Comcast decided to rebrand itself “Xfinity”. (“Simply put, XFINITY is about offering our customers more — more HD, more speed, more choice and more control over their services…”) Or, alternately simply put, Comcast is feeling the pinch of Verizon Fios’ competition and wants to try something else to retain and gain customers.

Interestingly, in both situations a company who has faltered in delivering upon the promise of its stated brand position decides to fix the problem by rebranding itself to a new position instead of improving upon its original promise. And just as interestingly, in both situations, the faltering company is being aggresively challenged in the marketplace by a company who dedicates more resources and commitment to delivering its brand promise better and better – and correspondingly communicating its success.

It doesn’t take a marketing genius to determine the better strategy for companies to mimic – especially in this age when consumers communicate with each other faster and more effectively than any one company can do on its own. Continue to invest in your brand promise – improve your product, improve your service, improve your delivery – and then your marketing communication efforts have legitimacy. On the other hand, no matter how many times you rebrand, if you don’t have the commitment to invest in your brand promise (whatever that may be), you’ll continue to come up short.

Domus is a marketing communications agency based in Philadelphia offering advertising, public relations, digital, and social media marketing expertise in an integrated approach based on sound, classic principles of marketing. For more information, visit us at http://www.domusinc.com.

Although advertising, sales, and customer service have always been strongly related, today more than ever the lines between them is blurred. Advertising is generally the process of increasing and reinforcing brand awareness in anticipation of a future desire to purchase. Sales is the process of converting interest to action later in the sales cycle. And customer service is generally the process of keeping existing customers happy with their purchasing decision post-sales.

Today, however, the display ad that increases brand awareness can have a hyperlink click-through to a landing page that starts the cycle for an online sale. Or the click-through can directly or indirectly (e.g., through a search) go to an online community forum where existing customers discuss their satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the brand (which in turn becomes an input into the sales decision process).

So, given that the three have become so interrelated, why do so many companies still keep different organizational reporting lines for the three functions? Especially today when the economy is fragile and profits are razor-thin, companies should consider how they can maximize the effectiveness of all three functions by more fully integrating them.

Domus, Inc. is a Philadelphia-based marketing communications consulting company. Please visit our web site at http://www.domusinc.com for more.