CISCO SYSTEMS CAMPAIGN

Creative Center: Los Angeles

Branch: San Francisco

THE PROBLEM. Although Cisco Systems routers were practically reinventing the Internet and the company was receiving great press in publications like "Wired," not to mention splitting its stock three times in six years, nobody outside their immediate circle of high tech companies knew who Cisco was. To cultivate enough talented people to fill over a thousand jobs, Cisco needed an advertising message that worked both internally and externally. However, because of some negative experiences, they had lost faith in print advertising and were also seeking non-traditional ideas and media. THE SOLUTION. The first thing we had to address was their lack of identity, brought on by a lack of knowledge. To raise the bar even further, their target audience was not the active job seeker, but the passive one, since the caliber of people they needed were not likely to be at home having coffee while flipping through the want ads. We went to work defining what Cisco Systems is and what they do, without limiting the perception of what they were capable of becoming. Also, the company’s growth strategy, buying new technology companies instead of getting bogged down inventing new technologies themselves, was central to their core concept of consummate change without consummate ego. Dovetailing with this internal revolution was their desire to be perceived as architects of a bigger revolution, the one from without. The revolution in networking. We defined the revolution by offering the objective of any revolution. Freedom. From that we created the signature line: CISCO. A Free World. Like Cisco and the universe it is reforming, the possibilities are endless.