AT&T's CMO on Turning Brand Love Into Revenue Growth

When Kellyn Smith Kenny took over as chief marketing officer (CMO) of AT&T in November 2020, she joined a company at an inflection point. For years, AT&T had poured money into entertainment, including its $85 billion acquisition of Time Warner, and had owned the satellite TV provider DirecTV. By the time Kenny arrived, the company was already unwinding that strategy and refocusing on its core telecom business: DirecTV was spun off, WarnerMedia was later separated into its own company, and much of its capital was redirected toward 5G and fiber networks, as well as paying down debt.

In her own words, Kenny found this iconic company somewhat adrift and in need of rediscovering its identity — and it was exactly that complexity that drew her in. Having worked at Microsoft, Capital One, Uber and Hilton, Kenny wanted to land somewhere marketing would be a decisive factor in unlocking the company's full potential. Nearly six years later, now also holding the title of chief growth officer, Kenny says she can finally show in hard numbers how brand strength drives customer growth.

One of the metrics Kenny calls "brand love" works like this: consumers are asked to rate brands on a seven-point scale, from "hate" to "love." AT&T counts anyone who picks one of the top two scores — a six or a seven — as a brand lover. According to Kenny's data, AT&T's brand love score has climbed 13 points over the past five years, at a time when a one- or two-point annual gain is typically considered a strong result.

The most important finding, though, emerged once survey results were matched against customers' subsequent behavior. Per the company's analysis, prospective customers who say they love AT&T are 1.6 times more likely to actually become paying customers within the following 12 months. Among existing customers, brand lovers are nearly three times less likely to churn — the rate at which customers drop a service and switch to another carrier — and roughly 50% more likely to add a second service, such as bundling home internet with their wireless plan. What's more, in markets with strong brand love, the cost of converting a prospect into a customer runs about 50% lower, Kenny says.

Kenny's role as chief growth officer pulls marketing closer to the company's product and growth strategy: she oversees customer research, analytics and digital, and her team directly shapes the product roadmap and operating strategy. For instance, research found that roughly 40% of consumers are highly price-sensitive, and many resent effectively paying for services marketed as "free." That finding led to the creation of Build a Plan, a plan starting at $15 a month that lets customers pick only the services they actually want.

The same research also reshaped how AT&T handles service outages. After finding that customers wanted stronger guarantees around network and customer-service reliability, the company rolled out the AT&T Guarantee program: fiber internet customers who experience an outage of 20 minutes or longer get a day's service credit, and technical issues are guaranteed to be resolved within 24 hours. The program followed roughly $1 billion in investment in customer service and technology upgrades, which gave AT&T the ability to automatically detect outages, alert customers and issue compensation. According to Kenny, satisfaction among customers who have triggered the guarantee is actually higher than among those who've never had an issue at all.

One of Kenny's biggest marketing challenges is translating the value of infrastructure investments that are typically invisible to customers. To address this, AT&T specifically notifies customers when connectivity improves or internet speeds increase in their area. The company's FirstNet network, built nationwide for emergency responders, is a prime example of turning infrastructure into a more tangible benefit: research shows that FirstNet advertising boosts brand trust even among ordinary consumers who can't use the network themselves, simply because they know first responders have priority connectivity in an emergency. Kenny's core point boils down to this: brand strength only has value once it's shown to move business outcomes — winning a new customer or growing an existing one's spend — and putting numbers behind that link lets marketing speak in a language other executives understand: revenue growth.