Cisco's $US100 million make-over

Stuart Corner
Sunday, 08 October 2006 16:26

IT Industry - Deals

The campaign will run in magazines and newspapers, and on television, Web sites and mobile phones.

Although it is a company with annual revenues of $US28 billion and well known to telecoms industry people, knowledge of Cisco among the general public is virtually nil. Sue Bostrom, Cisco's chief marketing officer, was reported saying: "When we tested audiences, we found that our familiarity is lower than our technology peers."

That was not so important when the company was focussed solely on the telco and enterprise markets but with the acquisition of Linksys a couple of years ago Cisco is now very much in the Soho and consumer space, and also with its $US6.9 billion purchase of set-top box maker, Scientific Atlanta.

The new logo and ad campaign were unveiled to an audience of investment analysts in New York. CEO John Chambers was reported telling them:  "We believe [the] distinction between routers and switches and everything else will actually blur over time. Don’t view us as a router company or a switch company or a security company or a data centre company. Think about how all these fold together."

In parallel with the campaign, Cisco has revamped its website  (http://www.cisco.com). Explaining the changes on the site, the company says: "A transformation is occurring on the Web. The end user is more in charge, creating collaborative websites and blogs, generating, mixing and sharing content, and having more of a say in how companies do business with them.

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