AT&T’s New Brand Message: Love Us or Leave Us

Thanks to BoingBoing for bringing our attention to AT&T’s (NYSE: T) newest move to drive customers away.  It seems as though AT&T has updated its legal policy online to include some new language that says in a nutshell if an AT&T customer says anything negative about AT&T, then AT&T has the right to drop that customer.

Here’s the text from the Term/Termination section of the new AT&T legal policy:

“AT&T may immediately terminate or suspend all or a portion of your Service, any Member ID, electronic mail address, IP address, Universal Resource Locator or domain name used by you, without notice, for conduct that AT&T believes”… ”tends to damage the name or reputation of AT&T, or its parents, affiliates and subsidiaries. Termination or suspension by AT&T of Service also constitutes termination or suspension (as applicable) of your license to use any Software. “

In other words, if you’re an AT&T customer, you’re only allowed to say positive things about AT&T or else.  For some reason, I don’t think consumers are going to like this heavy-handed, threatening approach from AT&T.  Instead of embracing the power of the internet, social networking and viral marketing, AT&T is basically telling the world to leave them out of the digital media environment – unless it’s on their terms.

I don’t think that strategy is working.  Already, the story of AT&T’s revised online legal policy is making its way across the web.  It reminds me of Dell’s reaction to a former employee’s online confessions.  Of course, Dell realized the error of their ways quickly and has since launched the Direct2Dell blog and IdeaStorm to leverage social media rather than reject it.  Check out this post on Brand Autopsy for a great review of Dell’s (NASDAQ: DELL) social media efforts.

What do you think of AT&T’s new legal policy?