Tony Hallett’s After These Messages: Communications Cisco-style

It can’t always be easy being a top ranking exec at Cisco. Sure, you’re probably worth a mint by now but when your five-year-old asks you what you do, you can’t very easily whip out a router or encryption software. Even plenty of software companies get to show their technology on a screen somewhere but so much of good networking is about being in the background, being low profile but reliable.

All of which brings me to Cisco’s latest big TV campaign. When I saw the first ad I wondered what it was for. It felt very ‘US tech’ but not quite the same as HP’s latest ‘+HP' campaign.

It is polished and very late nineties. Remember all those ads at the time of the internet boom? One that particularly comes to mind is from a Cisco rival, Nortel. ‘Come together’ – overlaying the Beatles song of the same name - didn’t just hit the convergence suite spot. It was cool, classy and got the ultimate put down – the TV ads were only there to boost a share price. After all, how many people in the general public need to know Nortel?

Well, the first in the latest series of Cisco ads isn’t dissimilar but I’d wager it isn’t about pumping up a stock. If anything, it’s about positioning the network – and so Cisco – as key to everything we do.

So we get a glimpse of two would-be lovers in touch in real time via wirelessly connected PDAs (iPaqs?), about to rendezvous for the first time in some chilly European city after, we suppose, a few months of virtual, network-based trysts.

Thankfully for both of them, the network doesn’t seem to be about to go down – and both are fairly attractive. (Well she is but then adland is populated with such mismatched couples. Don’t get me started on that Brita commercial.)

Jump cut to another place, maybe at the same time. A bunch of hackers have been taken in for charging. They are, the narration assures us, “about to start a new career”. Now either that means they’re off to some eastern European gulag for the next 20 years or they’re being converted into top-notch poacher-turned-gamekeeper types. I’m really not sure. Team silcon.com suspects the latter but Cisco themselves still haven’t been able to come up with an answer for me.

This type of offering must try to strike a balance between somehow explaining what a Cisco does while leaving you feeling good about the company – even if by the end you still don’t really know what they do. Both are difficult to pull off but I think Cisco manages it here.

It is also good news for partners who are often the ones selling the Cisco kit to user organisations. Certainly BT’s Pierre Danon sounded happy with the campaign at a briefing earlier this month.

What’s more, as opposed to four or five years ago, this kind of campaign now stands out. It’s almost like saying we’re as strong as ever – and we have the confidence to spend millions on cultivating the feel-good factor.

Tony Hallett is the Editor of silicon.com. You can reach him, when he's not watching television, at thallett@silicon.com.