AT&T wires up brand new systems company

Telecommunications giant AT&T has a new systems and technology company, Lucent Technologies. Name generation and branding was by Landor in San Francisco.

Lucent was formed a result of AT&T’s restructuring into three stand-alone entities: a communications services company which retains the AT&T name and logo, a business computing company which reverted back to the original NCR Corporation name and logo, and Lucent Technologies.

The name Lucent is intended to reflect “clarity of thought, purpose and vision, and have a technical feel”, says Lucent chairman and chief executive Henry Schacht.

Landor, which “has done other branding projects in the past” for the client, according to a group spokesman, had only 15 weeks to complete the project. Of the 700 names developed and evaluated, those shortlisted were screened in 13 languages, including Thai, Arabic and Hindi, to ensure there were no negative cultural connotations or copyright problems.

“[Landor] will be involved as we phase in the brand,” says a spokeswoman for AT&T, which considered several unnamed “top” design groups for the job.