Cisco Marketing Dollars Wasted
November 6, 2007 Posted by Al Castle

trackback Categories: Marketing, OSX, Puter Stuff, gnash-teeth

NBCs Heroes is a pretty good show. A month or so ago I purchased the entire first season from iTunes for several reasons of which Steve Jobs is aware of. NBC, not so much.

The iTunes download does not include commercials. This is an important point, as it’s one of the reasons I was willing to pay good money for the DRMware. The other reason why I simply didn’t rent the season is the convenience of digital media. I found what I wanted without having to go anywhere, watched episodes on my laptop, AppleTV and iPhone when and where I wanted.

With the recent iTunes / NBC falling out, Heroes second season is not available from iTunes download. It also probably won’t be available for DVD rental until well after the series has aired. A friend of mine pointed out that I could watch the full episodes via NBC.com. I’m writing this during the commercials of Heroes, the ones I turn the sound off for.

The first commercial of the first episode I watched, begrudgingly, as I prefer being able to enjoy a show all the way through. (Why are commercials always louder than the actual show?) The second commercial was the same as the first - odd, but okay. All the commercials in fact were the exact same, it’s not even a good commercial. At the very least they could have done some creative variations to sell me their brand or product.

A good example of variant television marketing advertisement would be the many wonderful commercials for the iPhone. Each one different and illustrating another product feature. I was expecting something like that when the episode loaded letting me know that Cisco was sponsoring this show.

I’m now on the 4th episode and have muted the Cisco commercials each time they rear their ugly, noisy head. I also have no idea what they were trying sell me. I deem my avoidance of them a complete success. Unfortunately for Cisco that’s a lot of wasted money. I’m their target market - 30 something male who has money and likes to spend it on toys. Additionally at the companies I work for I am the purchaser of IT software and hardware.

Cisco purchased Linksys awhile back, I used to think Linksys routers & firewalls were quality products. I first learned of them through word of mouth marketing from other technical people. I in turn, told others about Linksys. Not once have I ever seen a Linksys commercial. I don’t even know if they have any, frankly they never needed any.

Just last week after using a recent Linksys home router/vpn/firewall product I was cursing it’s shoddy interface and gross limitations. Is Cisco saving money on quality assurance, interface design and product testing only to waste it on poor online marketing?

p.s.

NBC figure out a way to save face if you have to, but make up with iTunes. Your target audience is becoming agitated and may become annoyingly vocal soon.

Cisco - I’m available for consulting and house cleaning your marketing department.

The Castle has spoken.