Adam Ketterer, account manager at TopLine Communications, looks at Cisco’s efforts to humanise its social brand on Vine
Page: vine.co/cisco
Number of followers: 3537
1: Human touch: Cisco has followed many B2B brands in adopting Vine with the aim of humanising its brand, but its execution has let it down.
2: Complex made simple: it has achieved its goal of presenting complex technology in creative ways that appeal to non-technical audiences.
3: Popularity: Cisco’s following on Vine is understandibly lower than its other social networks, but it’s heading in the right direction.
US-based networking giant Cisco Systems is in the business of connecting people, so you’d think that engaging with its audience would be a walk in the park. But, with global reach and a fairly sprawling social presence, getting your message across to stakeholders in coherent and impactful ways can be a challenge. Cisco’s response was to go social where few B2B brands dare to tread: on Vine.
Direction
Cisco jumped on the Vine train last year as part of a wider push for social engagement. The driving factor here, according to the Cisco marketing blog, was the need to ‘tell a story with a very technical product’ that would strike a chord with everyone, not just tech heads.
Tactics employed to humanise Cisco included: Vines starring the real people behind the brand; event teasers and vines that showcase the visuals of new system launches; user competitions; a bid for humour and vines from popular Vine celebs; and well-crafted vines promoting the #IoE internet of everything hashtag. It was in this last category that Cisco came closest to achieving its goal: informative content presented in entertaining ways. In July last year five of these vines were posted, each with a little forecast of how the #IoE will affect our lives in the future and the vine itself illustrating this snippet.
Engagement
We shouldn’t be too hard on Cisco, after all, Vine’s still nowhere near as popular as other social channels; Cisco’s following of 3537 is dwarfed by its 343,000-odd following on Twitter. But on the face of it the company hasn’t gained much ground in creating a social brand we can identify with – not through its Vine efforts anyway. The most successful vine was an #IoE post by a popular user, a ‘gorilla’ named Sylvio, which had 2399 likes, 531 revines and 107 comments at last count; Cisco’s best-performing owned vine got 37 likes, 13 revines and no comments.
Disappointing pickup aside, Cisco seems to be going in the right direction. It’s using Vine and other networks to engage directly with its audience, but also to engage with its other social channels, such as its Cisco Service Provider profile – and these accounts are run by real Cisco people, identified in the bios. The truth is, the ‘human’ vines that feature more staff members, kids and dogs than network architecture are a bit cringe-worthy, and the event vines are boring. The well-conceived and well-executed #IoE vines of July 2013 deserved more shares, but the platform just isn’t quite there yet.
What I do like about Cisco’s social team is its open discussion of strategy. The Cisco blog has posts from members of the marketing department writing about the challenges that Cisco, as a B2B tech company, has identified. They share the methods they’re testing out and the progress they’re making, tentative as it may be.
Overall rating: 5/10
