Setting Ideas Free: From Boardrooms to Whiteboards

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Inventing a new category of Intent-driven Networking for Cisco

Client
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Cisco

Services
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Strategic Messaging & Positioning

Case study challenge - Strategy by Mortar Creative Advertising San Francisco

The Challenge

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Align a global team so they can successfully launch the world’s next era of networking.

Strategic Decision

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Enlist Mortar to pull out the best creative thinking from an in-house team.

The A-Ha Moment

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“Boo-yah! The answer’s in the room!”

The Solution

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We led Cisco through a series of highly collaborative workshops with global team members drawn from inside and outside the company. Together, we identified five drivers to launch what was to become “The Network. Intuitive”:

Driver One: Business Networking Breakthrough. Position the new launch as the next-generation of connecting people and devices.
Driver Two: Silence the Skeptics. Present Cisco as the solution to a problem that everyone else thinks is unsolvable.
Driver Three: Activate & Accelerate Value. Declare Cisco the core enabler of an organization's ability to produce real business value.
Driver Four: The Authority on All-Things Network. Prove Cisco is the only one that can deliver the networking goods.
Driver Five: Be Bold & Believe. Communicate the power and drive the message home with confidence.
The Network. Intuitive.

*Positioning strategy by Mortar. “Network. Intuitive” execution by Teresa Alpert and the Ogilvy Group.

The Results

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Our messaging helped drive global communications development. The launch of the Network Intuitive was one of the most successful in Cisco’s history.

800+ ‘Network Intuitive’ related stories in 48 countries

62% of the top 50 publications ran ‘Network Intuitive’ pieces