{"id":3595,"date":"2019-02-10T23:21:00","date_gmt":"2019-02-11T04:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/themuseumoftelephony.wordpress.com\/?p=3595"},"modified":"2025-09-29T17:19:33","modified_gmt":"2025-09-29T22:19:33","slug":"att-deathly-commercials-att-merlin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/clickford.net\/telephony\/att-deathly-commercials-att-merlin\/","title":{"rendered":"AT&#038;T Deathly Commercials (AT&#038;T Merlin)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the mid to late 1980s, AT&amp;T used what I would characterize as deathly commercials and using fear from alleged real-life experiences. Another part of this series was the <a href=\"https:\/\/themuseumoftelephony.wordpress.com\/features\/videos\/\">AT&amp;T Spirit system (see here<\/a>)<\/p>\n<div class=\"jetpack-video-wrapper\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"AT&amp;T Merlin Phone System TV Commercial - Jan 1988\" width=\"636\" height=\"358\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/QoJ9AZxLUmM?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;Turned out our new phone system hadn&#8217;t had the whole place intimidated. No one could make it work\u00a0 \u00a0Supposed to make us look good, we were coming cross looking like a bunch of clowns.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The style of the ad was very film like, with a tight shot and a loose pedestal so the camera looked as if it was a person looking at the individual. The last 10 seconds had a dark soundtrack with a stern warning &#8220;that your business phone is your business lifeline.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>From my knowledge, it is unclear what system or vendor AT&amp;T was attacking (or attempted to mock). As previously posted, t<a href=\"https:\/\/themuseumoftelephony.wordpress.com\/2019\/01\/29\/the-wizard-of-atts-merlin-long-lasting-legacy\/\">he AT&amp;T Merlin was more designed for simplicity over any technical features<\/a>, that may had not been available for all customers who would connect to the phone company for a decade longer. While AT&amp;T is mocked by some, that marketed &#8220;Fisher Price toys&#8221; of phone systems; there is some sign that they had decent market of the US Small business market, leaving the others to the consolidated Japanese market as well as Nortel.<\/p>\n<p>On a sidenote: I feel that such campaigns have not only been long gone, and since the advent and aggressive marketing borderline on backstabbing, &#8220;Cloud PBX&#8221; and Voice over IP have ultimately made business telephony less of a &#8220;lifeline&#8221; with no responsibility to defend it.<\/p>\n<p>Since the 2000s, with Millenials and Gen Z coming to age, and their &#8220;Meh&#8221; attitude, if a call is dropped, they just move on, forget 5 minutes ago while they don&#8217;t have attention to realize why a call was dropped in the first place. (The attention deficit and the\u00a0<em>retention<\/em> deficit that makes these people not function well in a real business world in 2019.) Not to mention they assume everyone has caller ID and insist a &#8220;missed&#8221; call is good enough for them.<\/p>\n<p>#<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the mid to late 1980s, AT&amp;T used what I would characterize as deathly commercials and using fear from alleged real-life experiences. Another part of this series was the AT&amp;T Spirit system (see here) &#8220;Turned out our new phone system&hellip;  <\/p>\n<p class=\"more-link\"><a href=\"https:\/\/clickford.net\/telephony\/att-deathly-commercials-att-merlin\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[135,164,911,977,1028],"class_list":["post-3595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-ads","tag-att-merlin","tag-telleyphones-on-telleyvision","tag-video","tag-your-business-phone-is-your-business-lifeline"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clickford.net\/telephony\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clickford.net\/telephony\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clickford.net\/telephony\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clickford.net\/telephony\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clickford.net\/telephony\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3595"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/clickford.net\/telephony\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3595\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7354,"href":"https:\/\/clickford.net\/telephony\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3595\/revisions\/7354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clickford.net\/telephony\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clickford.net\/telephony\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clickford.net\/telephony\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}