One to watch: Cisco adopts a new brand language

It’s really exciting to see what Cisco are up to with their brand: they’re talking about the ‘Internet of Everything’ and they want to be at the heart of it.

They now have a ‘Director of Brand Experience’, and they’re transforming themselves from a networking company to being your most strategic IT partner.

They have good experience of delivering the emotional side of the brand – they say that ‘Cisco Live’ earlier this year delivered 20K registrants and 235K virtual visits. Not bad for a networking company!

And we helped them as long as 12 years ago when they did the same thing – moving from the dry and technical positioning statement: ‘The network works. No excuses’ to ‘Empowering the internet generation’.

They see language as being critical to the understanding, and engagement with, the brand, so they’re putting a huge amount of effort and resources into ensuring that they get their message across, in terms that everyone – staff, channels and customers – understands.

It’s a great demo of what our business is all about: they’ve understood that, despite the technical nature of their products, people need to understand them as they will want to engage on an emotional level.

I wish them well. Let’s see how successful they are!