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.

Sprint CEO Dan Hesse

Sprint and the league didn’t disclose the size of the deal, though I am told it is fair to say that it is “in the millions” of dollars. Sprint replaces T-Mobile USA, which had been the league’s partner from 2005 until the end of last season.

As part of the pact, Sprint will offer its subscribers a new Sprint NBA Mobile app that will offer in-game and post-game video highlights, radio broadcasts of every game (including home and away radio broadcasts) as well as the usual assortment of news, scores and stats. Sprint says the app should be ready for Android by the time the delayed season tips off later this month. An iPhone version should be available at some point, though it may not have the exact same features.

Sprint subscribers who want even more basketball can get a 20 percent discount on the NBA’s mobile “League Pass,” which offers up to 40 out-of-market games per week.

But the relationship between the two, which Twitter has been actively trying to promote in the last nine months or so, is a funky one: Sometimes Twitter gets excited about TV shows that lots of people don’t care about. And sometimes TV’s most popular shows aren’t nearly as popular on the social messaging service.

You can see this illustrated quite effectively via data from SocialGuide, a start-up that tracks who’s saying what on the Web about live TV. SocialGuide wants to track TV commentary on all of the social media platforms, but right now it has the best bead on Twitter, because it has access to the service’s data “firehose.”

So while the chart below, which looks at TV shows that aired during the last week of May “sweeps,” technically encompasses more than Twitter data — there’s some Facebook commentary included there, for instance — it’s best to look at it as a Twitter proxy for now:

Notice that some of the most popular shows on TV are also a big deal on Twitter: American Idol, Glee, and some of the NBA playoff games map very closely on the two rankings.

But in other cases, there’s a big disparity.

For instance, there’s a slew of reality shows — “Mob Wives,” “America’s Best Dance Crew,” “Khloe & Lamar,” etc., that don’t crack the Nielsen top 100 for the week, but all place very highly on SocialGuide’s chart. Meanwhile, some of TV’s most popular shows, like “NCIS” and “Modern Family,” show up much further down SocialGuide’s rankings.

(If you’re interested in methodology, here’s a brief version: SocialGuide is only tracking commentary made while the shows are airing. But it’s attempting to track both explicit “check-ins” — either made using Twitter hashtags or via services like GetGlue — and implicit ones, when users refer to the show by name, etc.)

So what does that tell us? Hard to say. It’s tempting to make demographic links on some of these shows — for instance, surveys show that Twitter has a disproportionately large African-American user base, and perhaps that skews the ratings for shows like “Love & HipHop.”

But the data is pretty scattered, so I’d be wary of that: Anyone want to suggest why “Extreme Couponing” does well on Twitter? Also, is “Extreme Couponing” what I think it is?

In any case, the dream scenario for Twitter’s sales and marketing team (hi, Adam!) would be data that shows increasing Twitter popularity reflected in a show’s ratings. SocialGuide is just starting to publish this data, so it will be worth watching in the months to come.

It will also launch what it calls the NBA FanCam–an app where fans can take a photo and then add various basketball-themed images and share the composite via social media.

“We are thrilled to deliver ‘fan-fueled’ NBA-themed mobile content, reflecting our strategy of putting the fans in the driver’s seat and creating content for celebrating on mobile and sharing via social media,” Cellfish CEO Fabrice Sergent said in a statement. “Given the worldwide enthusiasm for the NBA and its 30 teams, we know that fans will find this content exciting to further celebrate their favorite teams.”

The start-up touts itself as having more than $100 million in revenue and has 320 employees in the U.S., France, Germany and Canada.

Apologies for this, but it is indeed a slam dunk: James and his shoe company have a new ad to show off, and the Internet wants to see it, then talk about it. Google tallies 58 stories so far about the new ad. Make that 59….

And the hit reporters/bloggers keep on coming at All Things Digital.

Today, we are honored to add Tricia Duryee to the staff of our site, where she will be covering commerce, online payments, gaming and more.

In other words: She’ll show us the money.

Or not, in some cases.

The broad commerce beat is important to ATD, as we focus on what we think is another key space on the Web–a topic that straddles retail, mobile, social and virtual, as companies old and new try to come up with sustainable business models online.

While Amazon and eBay, as well as new upstarts such as Groupon and Square, are the obvious candidates for Tricia’s coverage, how commerce is innovating on the Internet is a wider-ranging story we aim to cover closely.

And Tricia is just the kind of superb beat reporter we were looking for to pioneer the coverage for us.

She comes to ATD from her recent job as Editor of mocoNews.net, an online site dedicated to covering the wireless industry. MocoNews is a sister publication of paidContent.org, and both are owned by the Guardian News & Media.

Tricia joined mocoNews in February 2008 and has written about how the Apple iPhone has changed the cell phone industry, how ringtones are giving way to mobile TV and how the carriers are building out the next-generation of networks.

Prior to mocoNews, Tricia spent eight years at the Seattle Times. In her first five years, she covered venture capital and Seattle’s start-up scene.

And, in her final three years, she wrote about the regional wireless industry, which included stories such as Cingular’s $41 billion acquisition of AT&T and how T-Mobile’s Sidekick was a must-have among celebrities, including NBA All-Stars such as Ray Allen.

The Seattle native attended the University of Oregon, where she received a degree in journalism and a minor in business.

Tricia is located in Seattle still, in a 102-year-old house, with a 10-year-old dog and a more recent husband.

We’re also thrilled Tricia is reporting from there and hope she’ll give our readers a flavor of what’s going on in tech in the Pacific Northwest, which is one of the key digital hubs in the U.S.

And the hit reporters/bloggers keep on coming at All Things Digital.

Today, we are honored to add Tricia Duryee to the staff of our site, where she will be covering commerce, online payments, gaming and more.

In other words: She’ll show us the money.

Or not, in some cases.

The broad commerce beat is important to ATD, as we focus on what we think is another key space on the Web–a topic that straddles retail, mobile, social and virtual, as companies old and new try to come up with sustainable business models online.

While Amazon and eBay, as well as new upstarts such as Groupon and Square, are the obvious candidates for Tricia’s coverage, how commerce is innovating on the Internet is a wider-ranging story we aim to cover closely.

And Tricia is just the kind of superb beat reporter we were looking for to pioneer the coverage for us.

She comes to ATD from her recent job as Editor of mocoNews.net, an online site dedicated to covering the wireless industry. MocoNews is a sister publication of paidContent.org, and both are owned by the Guardian News & Media.

Tricia joined mocoNews in February 2008 and has written about how the Apple iPhone has changed the cell phone industry, how ringtones are giving way to mobile TV and how the carriers are building out the next-generation of networks.

Prior to mocoNews, Tricia spent eight years at the Seattle Times. In her first five years, she covered venture capital and Seattle’s start-up scene.

And, in her final three years, she wrote about the regional wireless industry, which included stories such as Cingular’s $41 billion acquisition of AT&T and how T-Mobile’s Sidekick was a must-have among celebrities, including NBA All-Stars such as Ray Allen.

The Seattle native attended the University of Oregon, where she received a degree in journalism and a minor in business.

Tricia is located in Seattle still, in a 102-year-old house, with a 10-year-old dog and a more recent husband.

We’re also thrilled Tricia is reporting from there and hope she’ll give our readers a flavor of what’s going on in tech in the Pacific Northwest, which is one of the key digital hubs in the U.S.

Ma asked Bryant to talk about his experience as a leader for the Los Angeles Lakers, which delighted the screaming fans at the event, but did little to clarify the parallels between playing professional basketball and running businesses in China.

This year Alibaba is hosting a guest speaker at the annual summit whose Internet industry credentials are clear—but who maybe even more of a surprise: John Donahoe, president and CEO of eBay. This year’s summit, which takes place in September, will also feature California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger as a keynote speaker.

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Starting Monday, Web-to-TV software company Boxee will distribute the National Hockey League’s Game Center Live online video content. In addition, the National Basketball Association is set to announce a similar partnership with Roku, maker of a digital video player that streams Netflix (NFLX) and Amazon (AMZN) Video on Demand via the Web, for the distribution of NBA digital video content, beginning with some of this season’s playoff games.

The NHL’s Game Center Live streams approximately a thousand of the league’s 1,200 games per season, or any games that are not national exclusives on Versus or NBC, the league’s partner networks, for $19.95 a month. No additional fees will be applied for the streaming of NHL Game Center Live content through Boxee’s social-media enabled, web-to-TV platform. Since the NHL is currently wrapping up its 2009-2010 season, the new NHL content available through the Boxee platform is minimal, but a spokesman for Boxee says this should lay the groundwork for a continued partnership into next season.

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Last week, Walt Mossberg and I interviewed entrepreneur, high-definition television fanboy, dancing fool and reliable gadfly Mark Cuban at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference.

Cuban, who sold his start-up Broadcast.com to Yahoo (YHOO) at the peak of the Web 1.0 bubble for billions, has been using that haul to do a lot of stuff.

In September 2001, the innovative Cuban launched HDNet, a provider of high-definition news, entertainment and sports programming. In January of 2000, he also used all those bucks to buy the Dallas Mavericks NBA franchise. He’s also co-owner of Landmark Theaters, Magnolia Pictures, and Rysher Entertainment, and holds a stake in Lions Gate Entertainment.

Cuban also made a laudable effort on the television dance competition, “Dancing With the Stars.”

After our onstage interview (highlights of that video are also below), BoomTown also got him to be more specific about his thoughts on a variety of things he discussed, including Google (GOOG) and its underwriting of its YouTube video subsidiary, HD TV, the problems with broadband and the Internet as a “utility.”

(And don’t miss his cheeky new post on his Blog Maverick site–“Who Cares What People Write?”–about ignoring, well, what some “amateur outtie” bloggers say most of the time.)

Cuban in the Green Room at D7:

Cuban Onstage:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090601/more-mark-cuban-trapped-in-the-green-room-at-d7-with-boomtown-and-the-flip-video-camera/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20090329/mark-cubans-twitter-bill-510-a-word/ http://allthingsd.com/20090329/mark-cubans-twitter-bill-510-a-word/#comments Mon, 30 Mar 2009 00:46:16 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=5739 Mark Cuban has owned the Dallas Mavericks for more than nine years, and during that time he’s racked up more than $1.5 million in fines from the National Basketball Association for various transgressions. But he’s still finding ways to plow new ground.

The latest: A $25,000 bill from the league for two messages, totaling 49 words, that he posted via Twitter on Friday night. Both tweets complained about the officiating in that night’s Mavericks-Denver Nuggets game.

Cuban’s response? This tweet, posted Sunday afternoon: “just found out got fined25k by nba.) nice.” And then, upon further reflection, he penned this beauty:

Cuban is now wondering aloud, via Twitter (of course) and his blog whether his tweets ought to be considered copyrighted–that is, whether blogs and other publications need his permission to reproduce the stuff he posts. I don’t think so, obviously.

But for what it’s worth, I did check Twitter’s terms of service, and was a little surprised to see that the micro-blogging service doesn’t exert any claim on its users’ work. That’s a refreshing change of pace compared to Twitter’s Web 2.0 peers.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090329/mark-cubans-twitter-bill-510-a-word/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090312/hoops-to-go-cbs-streaming-march-madness-to-iphone/ http://allthingsd.com/20090312/hoops-to-go-cbs-streaming-march-madness-to-iphone/#comments Thu, 12 Mar 2009 10:00:41 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=5149 More catnip for the convergence optimists, who dream about getting to watch anything they want on any device they choose: In addition to streaming all of its March Madness coverage on the Web, CBS is also letting iPhone and iPod touch owners watch the college basketball tournament on their devices.

Most sports/Web/mobile experiments have way too many caveats to make them really interesting–last month, when Time Warner’s (TWX) Turner let iPhone users stream the NBA All Star game, for instance, it wasn’t letting them watch the actual telecast of the game, just a series of alternate takes. But this is the real deal–you’ll see the actual CBS telecast, for all the games, commercials and all.

Of course, there are still asterisks with this one. It only works with WiFi, not a 3G wireless connection, which means you have to be fairly close to a computer to watch this on your phone. So why not watch it on that computer? Also, it’s not gratis: CBS (CBS) is selling the “NCAA March Madness on Demand” app for $4.99 on Apple’s (AAPL) iTunes store.

It’s an interesting inversion of the clichéd-but-true “analog dollars for digital pennies” phenomenon, whereby traditional content loses value as soon as it moves to the Web. In this case, CBS is asking you to pay money for something you could normally get for free.

But consumers, or at least early adopters who ingest content on their mobile phones, seem OK with this proposition. Presumably, that’s because they’re trading cash for convenience. I’m not quite sure how this will play out with college basketball, where those who really care about the games are going to get themselves in front of a big screen. But it’s cool to have it available, period.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090312/hoops-to-go-cbs-streaming-march-madness-to-iphone/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090213/nba-turns-to-video-conferencing/ http://allthingsd.com/20090213/nba-turns-to-video-conferencing/#comments Fri, 13 Feb 2009 18:46:03 +0000 Ben Worthen http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=8521 Amid a recession that has many families cutting back on their spending, sports teams are trying to find new ways to lure fans to their stadiums and off their couches. One part of the strategy will be on display this weekend at the NBA All-Star game in Phoenix.

Fans in the city will get a behind-the-scenes look at the festivities and be able to interact with some of the league’s stars–thanks to a high-definition video-conferencing system. The system, called TelePresence and made by Cisco Systems (CSCO), uses giant screens to create an experience as close to a face-to-face meeting as possible. (Cisco is one of the NBA’s “official partners,” so it gets to use league events to promote its products.)

“When people come to a major event like All Star they want to feel like they have something special and not just sit in a seat,” says Steve Hellmuth, executive vice president of operations and technology for NBA Entertainment. “This technology lets fans have a special in-person experience with a player.”

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