On Thu, 8 Feb 1996, rking wrote:

> Folks -
> 
> As a subscriber to this list for the past few months (and a Corporate lurker, 
> at that), I'd appreciate  your feedback regarding the following thread(s):
> 
> o Thoughts on MCI's strategy wrt establishing relationships with content 
>   providers/media companies, vs. AT&T strategy of providing conduit.
> 
> It appears (from a sales and marketing perspective) that MCI is much more 
> committed to "locking up" relationships with media companies than is AT&T. 
> MCI has gone to great lengths in the past year to "buy" market share in the 
> high-end business segment, and I wonder if at some point these media companies
> will realize that they are in effect helping to subsidize their competitors'
> distribution and marketing strategies wrt online/internet/multimedia.
> 
> Admittedly, I have a vested interest in this situation, as I am an Account 
> Manager in the Global Services Market Strata for AT&T.  Still, I find the 
> respective strategies of AT&T and MCI interesting.  But will either amount to 
> any significance in the long run, given the fragmented nature of the net 
> environment and the Microsoft marketing machine?
> 

  I have been watching this unfolding strategy with special interest
because images of the purpose and values that govern much of the global
character of the business world--are the key products--whatever their
practical utility.  Nowhere is this more important that in the 
fields of information and communications.  The approach given serious 
consideration by AT&T, consistent with that giant's historical 
enlightenment, is to maximize the value that it knows best, namely, 
communications.  By contrast, MCI appears to be most fascinated with the 
most odious possibilities--consistent with that opportunistic company's 
whole existence--in exploitation and manipulation of the citizens who are 
to be served.

  I think that there are two problems here for MCI.  First, management of 
the information and communications business requires mutually exclusive 
management psychologies that could wreck the combined operations.  
Secondly, citizens faced with a pack of bloodly thugs out to cut their 
throats are likely to be growing more desperate every day to find good 
corporate citizens who they can trust.  

   For those two reasons, the strategy employed by AT&T may be strikingly
triumphant.  That and the fact that MCI combined with Murdoch may become
the most despised corporate tyrant around could lead many citizens to
boycott the company and bury it in the garbage pit reserved for such
organs of misery.  That is my fondest hope, in the near future, anyway. 

Vigdor Schreibman - FINS 


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End of online-news-digest V1 #515
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From owner-online-news-digest@marketplace.com Mon Feb 12 20:34:00 1996
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