The Marketing Slogans I’d Give AT&T

By Wesley Fryer On July 6, 2011 · · Add Comment

Today I was using the website Wylio.com to search for Creative Commons licensed photos to use in some upcoming blog posts, and I searched for the terms, “education reform.” I came across the following two photos, which I took in 2007 when I was working for AT&T as a state education advocate. These are slogans I’d have given the company if I’d been in charge of educational marketing!

Of course I wasn’t in charge of marketing, and I ended up working for the company just another year after these photos were taken. It was a great job and I learned a lot, but it was challenging in many respects as well.

I never really liked the slogan, “Your world delivered.” I always thought we should go with something more along the lines of, “Empowering you to remix your world” or “Empowering you to invent the future.”

My preference for “empowering” over delivering has definitely colored my work since for Storychasers, the K-12 Online Conference, and in my upcoming eBook, “Playing with Media: simple ideas for powerful sharing.” Empowering is a much more appealing action verb for a teacher than “delivering.” At the top of the Kahn Academy website, similar to a McDonalds restaurant touting “billions and billions served,” Sal Kahn proclaims, “63,206,820 lessons delivered.” The word delivering reminds me of pizza. Empowering makes me consider ways to change the world. Words make a big difference.