AT&T, Taps Cars Movie in Multi-Million Direct Mail Campaign
AT&T is rolling out a new campaign to promote the upcoming release of the Disney/Pixar animated feature Cars via a direct-mail campaign and interactive Web site touting its lightning-fast products and services.
As part of the campaign, AT&T is rolling out more than 5 million Cars-branded catalogs and direct mail pieces to AT&T customers and prospective customers in the company’s 13-state territory through June. The company is using the Cars character Lightning McQueen, a speed-obsessed racecar in the film, to personify its high-speed Internet service. In one direct mailing, AT&T is offering high-speed Internet service for $12.99 a month when ordered online and its double speed Internet service, High Speed Internet Pro upgrade, for $17.99 per month.
In another oversized direct-mail piece, the company touts other services. The mailer features multiple AT&T offers, including Cingular Wireless service for $39.99 a month, AT&T/Dish network Digital satellite TV for $34.99 per month and a bundle offer for its wireless, Internet and Dish services for $90 a month.
“It helps us break through the noise of traditional marketing,” Sondra Leger Swanson, director of consumer marketing for AT&T, said of the direct mail component. “It also reinforces AT&T as a preferred provider of communication and entertainment.”
In addition, AT&T has launched a co-branded micro-site at ATT.com/Cars filled with AT&T offers, games and music tied the Cars film. The site gives visitors a chance to make their own Cars tunes by customizing rock, country, jazz and Latin tunes in an Audio Lab Disney created for AT&T. Visitors can download them as MP3s. Consumers also can test their racing skills with an online game, and download Cars desktop graphics and view the Cars movie trailer on the site.
In addition, visitors can find exclusive interviews and footage of musical artists, including Brad Paisley and Rascal Flatts who are featured on the Cars soundtrack. AT&T has an exclusive sponsorship on the music area of Disney’s Cars Web site Disney.go.com/disneypictures/cars, which will feature exclusive content from the AT&T Blueroom site before the Cars soundtrack hits stores next month, Leger Swanson said.
TV spots featuring the Cars characters break next week. AT&T will drop millions of FSIs (one in May and one in June) as part of its marketing alliance.
The Cars promotion builds on AT&T’s overall marketing campaign to use “leverage marketing tactics to showcase…growth and turn up the heat on cable competitors,” Leger Swanson said.
“We want to associate our brand with hip products and applications,” she added. “This gives us an opportunity to reach out more directly into our community, to break away from the perspective of the old telecommunications company and [become the] communications and entertainment preferred provider of those services.”
AT&T has tied in with other movie sponsorships including Disney’s/Pixar’s The Incredibles and Twentieth Century Fox’s Fantastic Four. The company spent $1.6 billion in total advertising revenue in 2005, a 26% decrease from spending in 2004, per TNS Media Intelligence. AT&T is one of several brands that have tied into the Disney’s/Pixar’s Cars (Xtra, May 16, 2006). Cars will have its world premiere on May 26 at the Lowe’s Motor Speedway at Charlotte. More than 30,000 fans have bought tickets to the sold-out event. The film opens in theaters nationwide June 9.
The campaign runs through June 30. Online materials, radio spots, TV spots and FSIs also support. Javelin Direct, Irving, TX, handles direct mail and bill inserts; Haggin Marketing, Mill Valley, CA, handles AT&T catalog and FSIs and GSD&M Austin, TX manages TV and radio media support.
