While many B2B marketers I’ve encountered have entered into the business via sales or other industry routes, Amanda Jobbins is a career marketer through and through. She currently runs the European marketing for Cisco managing teams based in four geographies and overseeing all of their marketing activity; including PR, channel marketing and architectural marketing. The latter, she explains, involves marketing technology solutions in logical groups of products using terms that customers understand. This makes sense of course. And sense is definitely something that Jobbins seems to have in abundance. That, and razor sharp wit.
There’s no doubt that Jobbins is sharp in many senses of the word and this has manifested itself in a number of ways during her time at Cisco. This is particularly the case in the way in which she helped to steer the brand through the recession despite joining the organisation during the crux of the credit crunch. She admits that her marketing budget was ‘severely impacted’ during this time, particularly in events funding, and that this meant she had to find inventive ways of making trade-off choices to bring the most bang for the buck. Virtual events, which according to Jobbins was relatively unchartered territory for Cisco, was one such compromise that came up trumps.
“As a result of the recession, we experimented with fully virtual events and hybrid events, which enabled us to extend our audience reach at a significantly lower cost,” she reveals. She goes on to explain that this happened with both trade events and internal events, coolly citing Cisco’s annual sales conference as the largest virtual event with over 20,000 participants.
Post recession, Jobbins’ steely focus on virtual events continues, in particular to help extend event lifecycles. Commenting about this and specifically the forthcoming Cisco Live 2011 event, Jobbins says, “Once you’ve built a virtual platform for an event, you’ve really built a community. What we’re trying to do with our Cisco Live virtual event platform is make it a living and ongoing community that lasts throughout the year.”
To support the event’s community, Jobbins explains that she and her team are utilising popular social media platforms, as well as working closely with channel partners. And what will no doubt play a nifty hook to engaging the community, will be the event’s venue at the Excel Centre in London – also a venue for the London 2012 Olympics of which Cisco is the official network infrastructure provider. The centre is kitted out with the brand’s latest video and collaborative solutions, making Jobbins’ task infinitely easier, as visitors will be able to see Cisco technology in action.
‘A ha’ moments
Technology is obviously the principle driver in Cisco’s campaigns. Handy really, as Jobbins suggests that video and social media will continue to be big trends in B2B in the future.
“Video will change everything. Video’s the new voice. Just look at YouTube. People want to communicate visually, it’s the natural way to communicate,” she says.
Discussing social media’s role in the B2B space, Jobbins admits that she faces the same challenges as other B2B marketers.
“Everyone’s grappling with ‘Where’s the optimum place to use social media?’ There’s no map, so everyone’s had to learn through piloting. Naturally when you pilot something, you’ll have a lot of failures. But then you’ll harp upon a success, and you’ll think ‘A ha! this is it. I’ve found it’.”
So what have her ‘A ha’ moments been? For one, a hugely successful product launch via Facebook that saw 500 new ‘friends’ recruited overnight and an event sell-out. It was the first time the organisation used Facebook for a product launch as it previously believed it would never find so many of its target audience in this space. The results, however, were “a surprise for us” reveals Jobbins.
She quickly follows this up, however, remarking that when you really think about it – the Facebook campaign was a no-brainer, “Of course, we were targeting technology decision makers and they tend to use technology in their home lives, and they like to network.”
Captain in command
Jobbins’ personal qualities and deep-rooted understanding of marketing in the technology sector have no doubt helped her bring marketing to the forefront of Cisco’s business activity, where previously she says the discipline lacked direction.
“Historically, Cisco hasn’t been known as a marketing-led company. It was better known for being a technology or sales-led organisation,” she explains, describing how when she joined the company, she collapsed a number of marketing areas that were sitting in different sales groups and integrated them into one European marketing function. A logical move that has since enabled her to command a smooth-running marketing enterprise.
If there’s a hint of Star Trek here – it’s no coincidence. Not only does Jobbins refer to the future of technology as something out of the sci-fi cult series, her offices are glass-clad, high-tech and gadget filled. All she needs now is a pair of those short-flaired trousers and an intercom badge that whistles.
CAREER HISTORY
Cisco – 2008-present day
Symantec – 2004-2008
McAfee – 2002-2004
Bindview – 2001-2002
WorldbyNet.com – 2000-2001
IBM – 1999-2000
BMC Software – 1997-1999
Cable and Wireless – 1993-1997
