The spot depicts a batch of assembly-line robots busily building cars, as an instrumental version of the 1979 Gary Numan hit “Cars” plays happily. All is well until one of the robots experiences trouble and complains to the others, “I’m broken.” No problem, one of the others says, fixes his stricken comrade, and all is again well. Cue the voice-over, saying something about assembly lines that repair themselves. Then cue the corporate logo, aaaand … out.

The spot — which has exactly 100 percent less Ellen Page than the last series of Cisco TV ads — is part of a significant new advertising offensive that Cisco is launching today on television, in print and online. The TV spots will appear during the NCAA basketball games, the National Hockey League’s All-Star Skills Competition, and on CNBC and other business-oriented programming. However, it notably won’t appear during the Super Bowl.

Those robots will be seen again, disassembling and reassembling sections of certain Web sites as part of a series of “site takeovers,” including CNBC and The Street, among others.

The print portion is a six-page “manifesto” that explains ways that Cisco’s “Human Network” plays important and unexpected roles at banking companies and companies that sell chutney, and helps the National Basketball Association push its video around the world. The manifesto will appear in The Wall Street Journal (which, like this Web site, is owned by News Corp.), the Economist and the New York Times.

There will also be a social campaign via LinkedIn that goes after 140,000 C-level executives registered on that network. It will be the first time that embedded video will be used in a LinkedIn campaign. More TV ads will come later this year, as will localized versions of the campaign for international markets.

Last week, I talked with Blair Christie, Cisco’s chief marketing officer, who said that the manifesto in particular is about using the voice of its customers to show how Cisco’s technology can help companies do things they couldn’t do before. Of course, the point they’re supposed to get is that a Cisco intelligent network is what’s enabling them to do that.

Christie says it’s all part of Cisco’s effort to simplify how it communicates about itself. There’s no more muddling of the message. There’s no more consumer division to eat into the perception that Cisco is anything but an enterprise- and service-provider-focused networking company, so no more need for cute ads that overdo awkward jokes about teleconferencing, or showing a giggly twentysomething woman in a virtual fitting room. Cisco is now about transforming how companies do what they do, either by doing it better, or seeing new opportunities. It’s a big message, and a tricky one to get across in 30 seconds during a football game.

I asked Christie about the state of Cisco’s brand before this campaign, and whether or not there were any perceived weaknesses, given its recent troubles, that this ad effort is meant to shore up. “There was actually a lot that was right with our brand,” she told me. “The opportunity we had was clear and simple. Our customer voice is our talent, and that’s what we’re showing, and it’s consistent with our strategy. We use our customers as a test bed, so why not use them as a reflection of our brand? It wasn’t rocket science. But it was the customer voice that was missing.”

Simplifying and streamlining are themes that Cisco is certainly acquainted with of late. It has been doing a lot of those, and indeed, even shrinking itself as part of a broad-based restructuring. The results of that effort are starting to show up in Cisco’s results.

Time will tell if this new advertising campaign will help Cisco effectively reintroduce itself to its core customers; fight off strong competitive thrusts from the likes of Hewlett-Packard, whose networking division marketed itself aggressively against Cisco in 2010; and perhaps press a perceived advantage against Juniper Networks, which has been having its own problems.

What I find notable, or maybe missing from the campaign, are recognizable names of customers doing innovative things. Yes, there’s the NBA, but in the print manifesto, who’s the bank that’s using Cisco’s video TelePresence to interact with customers? Who’s the small chutney company that turned “browsers into buyers”? And who’s the car company with such smart assembly-line robots? It’s a good message that, to my mind, could be made a lot more effective with more specific examples.

And while I grant it’s often difficult to get customers to agree to be named in ads like this — you could almost hear CEO John Chambers’s frustration about not being allowed to name a certain banking customer, about which he was obviously proud, on a recent conference call — the biggest networking company in the world shouldn’t have such a problem. It should be able to brag that this or that household-name bank is an enthusiastic Cisco customer, and that Cisco networks powered the manufacturing of that popular car everyone is talking about right now. That would add some real oomph, and really serve to remind potential customers that Cisco is still, despite its recent missteps, the networking world’s alpha dog.

Anyhow, my critique aside, here’s the robots spot. Enjoy:

Cisco Robots from Arik Hesseldahl on Vimeo.

He won’t be replacing departing Chief Marketing Officer Michael Mendenhall as previously thought. Instead, Apotheker says a search is underway for a new chief marketing officer.

In a memo circulated to HP employees this afternoon, and which you can read below, Apotheker says that communicating a “shared vision” will be an important part of how he runs HP. To that end he has tapped a trusted communications hand in Wohl, who ran communications for him at SAP. Apotheker says in the new job Wohl will be deeply involved in unveiling what he calls “a new strategy and vision for HP.” (Might it perhaps have something to do with a shift toward services?)

The memo, in full, is below. And below that is a second memo, circulated to HP employees yesterday from Chief Strategy and Technology Officer Shane Robison concerning Mendenhall’s departure.

From: CEO – Leo Apotheker
Sent: Friday, January 07, 2011 2:09 PM
Subject: Organizational Announcement — Chief Communications Officer, Chief Marketing Officer

LÉO APOTHEKER
CEO

TO/ All HP Employees

After spending two months listening and talking to HP employees, investors and shareholders, I believe that one of the ways to drive our entire business forward is to articulate the value and the richness of HP, shared vision for our products and services, delivered with a common voice. To that end, I have created the position of Chief Communications Officer, reporting directly to me and I will have the Chief Marketing Officer report directly to me as well.

Starting January 18th, Bill Wohl, a recognized public relations veteran with 25-years experience, will join HP as SVP and Chief Communications Officer. Bill comes to HP after nearly 12 years at SAP, where he was a member of the company’s Senior Executive Team. As VP of Global Communications, Bill led his global team in development and execution of the strategic communications programs for SAP Field Operations. During his tenure, Bill was a trusted communications counselor to the company’s executive team across a range of strategic issues such as crisis, M&A, product launches and global company events. In addition, he was responsible for communications for SAP co-CEO Bill McDermott, and, as VP of Product and Field Communications, he handled communications for me during my tenure as SAP’s President.

Bill will be responsible for overseeing and coordinating communications across HP, and lead efforts to help me unveil the new strategy and vision for HP. He holds a Bachelor Degree in Public Affairs from the University of Delaware. In his spare time, he serves as an emergency medical technician and firefighter, responding to emergency 911 calls for the West Grove volunteer fire department (an organization for which he also has served as President and ambulance leadership positions) for the last 25+ years. Bill is relocating to the Bay Area, and starts at HP on January 18. Please join me in welcoming Bill to the company.

In addition, HP has commenced a search for a new Chief Marketing Officer, who will now oversee corporate marketing activities as we work to promote a pan-HP vision of our products and services for our customers. I would like to thank Michael Mendenhall for his service to HP and wish him the best as he moves to a new chapter in his life.

HP has tremendous opportunities to leverage its assets and deliver new and better solutions to our customers. In the months ahead, I will share more with you all about exciting new changes to the company’s strategy.

Please join me in extending a warm welcome to Bill Wohl.

Best,

Léo

SHANE ROBISON
Executive Vice President, Chief Strategy and Technology Officer

TO/ OST Employees

DATE/ January 6, 2011

SUBJECT/ Organizational Announcement

It is with regret that I write to let you know that Michael Mendenhall has decided to leave HP to pursue other opportunities. Michael has served as SVP and Chief Marketing Officer for three years and helped transform Corporate Marketing into a world-class organization, working to promote the HP brand and enhance our corporate reputation.

Among his many achievements, Michael helped boost HP’s corporate brand image and standing while advancing our efforts around Social Innovation and the Environment. In 2010, HP was ranked #10 by Interbrand in its ranking of the Best Global Brands, the first time in HP’s history that we had ever broken into the Top 10. We also ranked No. 12 in Millward Brown’s global brand valuation study. In 2010, Newsweek put HP at No. 2 in its list of America’s Greenest Companies, both in the U.S. and globally. HP was also ranked the No. 1 Corporate Citizen by CR (Corporate Responsibility) magazine in its list of Top 100 Best Corporate Citizens last year.

On a personal note, I want to thank Michael for all his work, for his commitment to the company and his staff and for his friendship. I also thank Michael for agreeing to stay on at HP for some time to ensure a smooth transition.

Please join me in thanking Michael for his service to HP and in wishing him well.

Sincerely,

Shane

One difference for the likes of me: Big ad sellers are making themselves very available to the press. This morning, for instance, AOL sent out CEO Tim Armstrong, sales boss Jeff Levick, sales deputy Erin Clift and content boss Bill Wilson to poke at eggs and ignore a plateful of bagels and lox.

Oh, and they talked, too! The big message was that they’re still in the process of overhauling the Internet giant on behalf of Time Warner (TWX), which brought in Armstrong from Google (GOOG) earlier this year and says it still plans on spinning off the company by the end of 2009.

Afterward, I got a brief interview (along with PaidContent’s David Armstrong) with the AOL chief. The video is at the bottom of the post, and you may need to turn up your speakers to hear it. But the takeaways are:

• AOL is still looking for a chief marketing officer. The search is in the “early stages.” Do you know anyone? Internet experience is not a prerequisite.
• More org chart moves, like the one that saw COO Kim Partoll pushed out last week, are coming. They’ll be part of the internal review process Armstrong has dubbed “Project Everest,” which should be complete by the end of the year.
• So are layoffs. See above.
• Internet ad dollars are beginning to flow out again–or if they’re not flowing, Armstrong thinks they will be, as big marketers like Procter & Gamble (PG) make permanent shifts in their advertising mixes.
• Armstrong professes to be surprised by a report last week that he had met with Yusuf Mehdi, who runs Bing and MSN for Microsoft (MSFT). “I know Yusuf. I’ve known him personally for years. So if I saw him I would be happy, but…”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090921/aol-more-org-chart-shuffles-coming-so-are-ad-dollars-but-mum-on-microsoft/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090226/one-last-yahoo-reorg-missive-bartz-tells-employees-what-she-already-said-again/ http://allthingsd.com/20090226/one-last-yahoo-reorg-missive-bartz-tells-employees-what-she-already-said-again/#comments Fri, 27 Feb 2009 00:00:15 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=10461

Goodness gracious, make it stop!

You must know by now how much BoomTown loves internal Yahoo (YHOO) memos. But this is getting ridiculous.

It’s been like a flash flood after a long drought at Sunnyvale HQ today, as Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz turns on the fire hose of a whole lot of communicating.

A lot. A real lot.

“I know you guys have reorg fatigue,” wrote Bartz, in the latest email to employees about the management reorganization finally announced this morning.

Also memo fatigue at All Things Digital HQ, if you can believe it.

Okay, I give, Carol! Well, for now, until another juicy internal memo you aren’t handing out freely lands in my inbox, for example, such as one about a search deal with Microsoft (MSFT). I’d like one of those to go, please!

But, in a gesture of a leak-free peace (can the drop-kick bounty be suspended for just today?), I am posting this last memo about the management reorganization from Carol “Chatterbox” Bartz.

(Although, I wish she would stop insulting the press, as she does below again. We are just doing our job–and very accurately, as it turned out–yet the jibes continue. Which is odd, frankly, given that Bartz has had mostly glowing coverage in the media her entire career.)

But Bartz did seem to leave a little mystery in the email still, as if even more rearranging were to come.

Writes Bartz (my bolding):

“As soon as decisions were made, I wanted you to know about them–even if that means we don’t have all the details nailed down yet”.

Wait, are the deets all nailed by Bartz’s productive hammer or aren’t they?

At least, thankfully, the note is capitalized properly, unlike the quaint no-caps stylings of former CEO Jerry Yang.

In any case, if you just can’t get enough, here is Bartz’s reorg blog from this morning and her new management structure memo too.

And here is her entire email on the reorg to employees:

From: Carol Bartz
Reply-To: Carol Bartz
Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2009 09:02:49 -0800
To: “all-worldwide@yahoo-inc.com”
Subject: Our New Organization

Yahoos,

As I’ve gotten to know Yahoo! over the past several weeks, I’ve developed a point of view on how our organization should be structured to set us up for success.

Our goal is simple: to consistently deliver awesome consumer and advertiser experiences, everywhere in the world we do business. Delivering great customer experiences is everyone’s job at Yahoo!–and each part of our organization will have a clear role in making that happen every day.

The timing of this announcement is important. As soon as decisions were made, I wanted you to know about them–even if that means we don’t have all the details nailed down yet. Yes, there’s been a lot of speculation in the media over the past few days…that’s been a little frustrating, but I’m not willing to speak publicly about decisions before they’re final. Today, they are–so I’ll lay out our new organizational structure for you now.

I know you guys have reorg fatigue. Hang in there–our intention is to leave this structure in place for two to four years. We’ll continue to make adjustments as needed, but we expect this core structure to stay put.

The structure outlined below will enable us to make big improvements in our product quality and operational efficiency. Part of that is simplicity–I’m frankly amazed at how complicated some things are here! We’ll have much clearer decision making and accountability. Product and regional teams will share responsibility for revenue targets and expense management, but we’ll have one P&L, for which I’m accountable.

We will also be in a better position to really listen to and understand our customers–both consumers and advertisers. I think we’ve gotten into the habit of focusing internally too much and we sometimes forget who we’re here to serve. You’ll notice that our management structure puts a renewed focus on the customer, with stronger feedback loops across the company…and they all come through me.

Also, as you know, no organizational structure is a substitute for collaboration, communication and trust. We’ll all need to evolve our behavior a bit–as teams and as individuals – to make this structure work the way it’s designed.

So here’s the overview, with the roles that will report directly to me. As you’ll see, some of our leaders are still to be determined. I know you’ll
want more detail than what’s below–you can learn more on Backyard: http://backyard.yahoo.com/ourorg .

Products: We’ve combined Tech and Product groups under one roof, led by Ari Balogh as EVP Products & CTO. Ari’s charter is to deliver global products that enable extraordinary consumer and advertiser experiences. Ari’s direct reports now include one leader for each product group–we’ve taken care of the “two in a box” problem.

One important note: The Connected Life team has been integrated into various parts of the new organization. Our mobile strategy remains a key part of Yahoo!’s focus going forward and all of our product groups will own mobile innovations. After leading Connected Life for four years, Marco Boerries has resigned from the company to spend more time with his family in Europe. We thank Marco for his important contributions at Yahoo!.

Regions: There are now two: North America and International. As I’ve said before, international growth is critical for Yahoo!, which has become too reliant on its U.S. business over the years.

The regions deliver Yahoo!’s products, programming and services to consumers, partners and advertisers in local markets. They will partner closely with the newly formed Regional Solutions & Products group in Ari’s organization to help drive a significant shift in how Yahoo! develops products for different geographies. The goal is to have global platforms on which regional product offerings are based.

The North American region–comprised of the U.S. and Canada–is led by Hilary Schneider. The leader of our International region, to be hired soon, will be responsible for a cohesive Yahoo! global strategy and seizing our international growth opportunities. Until we determine who’ll lead the International region, Rose Tsou (Asia), Rich Riley (Europe) and Keith Nilsson (Emerging Markets) will continue to report to me.

Marketing: Elisa Steele will be joining Yahoo! as our Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), effective March 23. Elisa joins us from NetApp where she was SVP, Corporate Marketing. Previous to NetApp, she held executive positions in marketing at Sun Microsystems. Elisa will oversee our global marketing strategy and provide direction for our marketing function. She’ll bring together the various Yahoo! marketing teams that have been spread across the company. Reporting into Elisa will be Brand Marketing, Audience Marketing, Corporate Communications, Insights, Policy & Privacy, Community Affairs and related central teams. I’m delighted to have Elisa joining the team.

Customer Advocacy: As I said, we can do much better in hearing the voice of the customer across Yahoo!, and incorporating what we hear into all of our work day-to-day. We have opened a search for a leader, who will oversee Customer Care and Ad Operations globally with the goal of improving how we support Yahoo!’s users and advertisers. In the interim, these teams will continue to report to Hilary.

Service Engineering & Operations: This new team is responsible for delivering common technology services at scale, including application management and infrastructure. No matter how cool our products are, the customer’s experience won’t be great unless our applications consistently deliver. Note that we’re bringing Service Engineering together as one group because these engineers bring expertise that is best applied horizontally. Leading this organization is David Dibble, who joined Yahoo! in December. David’s team also will be accountable for delivering more effective corporate IT systems.

Corporate Functions: Blake Jorgensen will be leaving Yahoo! and I am searching for a new CFO. Blake will remain through a transition with his successor, and I want to thank Blake for all of his great contributions to Yahoo! over the past two years. Mike Callahan will continue to lead our Legal team, and David Windley leads our Human Resources function. Joel Jones joins the team as my Chief of Staff.

So that’s the high-level view. These changes are effective immediately, but we’ve got more work to do in filling out the structure of each group. In the short term, this transition will be challenging for many of our people. My executive staff will be working with their organizations as quickly as possible to create further clarity. For example, we’ll need to recast budgets and adjust work areas so we have the right people working side-by-side.

I want to thank all of you who’ve shared your ideas and views with me since I arrived. Several leaders across Yahoo! came together to design this new structure–I’ve been very impressed with their dedication to the right outcomes, particularly how they’ve embraced the need to eliminate the silos that have been a drag on this organization for so long.

I think this organizational structure has the potential to solve many of the issues you’ve helped me better understand. Of course, new issues will emerge. But I know we’ll be aligned and nimble in tackling them together.

This is a tremendous, proud company with a powerful brand, great products and a bright future. Now’s the time to get more focused than ever on delighting our users and advertisers. Let’s show them how great Yahoo! can be.

Carol

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