Cisco Review - Assignment Example

The building of a strong brand enables a company to set itself apart from other businesses and is always considered to be a very important task for the marketing team. However building of a brand primarily depends on the kind of client (which may be an organization or a consumer) to whom the product or service will be delivered. A brand is generally referred to as a term, design, sign, or symbol o,r a combination of both which gives a unique identification to goods and services offered by the seller. In words of Walter Landor, the founder of Landor Associates; a brand is a kind of promise through which a company provides satisfaction and quality. While many things in the building of a brand are the same, building a brand that supports business to business-to-business business obrand-to-cbrand-to-customersustomersrs has slight differences.

In building f a brand in a business-to-business context, the priority shall be mainly given to making a strong bonding with the business of the client and in order to make one’s brand be seen as the most popular choice and the safest brand to do business. In order to build this perception in the mind of the client brand shall aim at building strong and lasting personal relatirelationshipsonship with the customer. Instead of going for mass marketing and advertisements, the focus shall be laid on educating the professional buyers about the brand. Professional buyers are used for this purpose because they are well-informed about the needs and objectives of the purchase and are interested in buying a product that will enable them to achieve higher revenues at loa wlowerer cost than the competitors (Anderson, 2008, p. 179). The brand shall also emphasize on a simplified supply chain and logistics to meet the demands of the customers.

In building a brand to consumers the building strategy has to take into consideration a vast number of people. As customers can easily develop a strong bonding with a brand unlike professional buyers, little investment is made oinn providing personal information rather emphasis is laid on popularizing the product through mass communication media like television, radio, newspaper, magazines, etc. In this kind, the brand-building strategy involves establishing the brand identity through repetition and through imagery. For this particular kind of client aggressive merchandising activities are employed such as using coupons, storefronts, displays, hoardings, etc to entice the target customers to buy the product.

Answer 2

Cisco is one of the leading suppliers of networking equipment (hardware and software) for the Internet. Cisco has from time to time resorted to new strategies to have a better reach to its consumers. By the end of the 20th century, Cisco was a very successful enterprise; its market capitalization was quite high. People generally perceived Cisco to be a good company on the basis of its stock prices but what the company actually did was not known to them properly. At this juncture, the company realized that it should implement rigorous brand-building strategies to paint a more favorable picture of the company in the mind of its customers. In the year 2008, it was awarded as the 18th biggest global brand when it received $39.5 billion in revenue. This achievement of the company is suggestive of the fact the way the company has built its brand awareness is remarkable. Some of the plans that Cisco implemented to build its brand awareness are:

• Partnership with companies like Sony, US West, and Matsushita for co-branding its modems.
• The company launched a campaign entitled “Are you ready” which delivered information related to the power of the Internet.
• It reorganized itself into 11 new technology groups and marketing organizations.
• In the year 2003, the company used a new marketing message, “This is the power to Network. Now.”
• Television Commercials
• The Eight Page Print ad spread was written very wittily. Until the third page the name of the company was not mentioned, this was done to build curiosity in the mind of the reader.
• Another campaign “The Human Network” aimed at repositioning the brand from merely a supplier of routers and switches to a medium of connecting people from different parts of the world through technology. 

Apart from these when it forayed into the consumer market it planned for more innovative ways for connecting with people like it developed a platform in which sports stadiums were converted to digitally enhance interactive venues.

The above-mentioned plans have immensely helped the company not only to build brand awareness but also brand recognition and brand value. Moreover, it has communicated the company’s product line and the competitive benefits better as compared to the past. Therefore, the strategies taken by the company reinforces the belief that Cisco’s plan to reach out to its consumer is viable.