Winner: Cisco 2016 Brand Campaign
Taking a bold and optimistic step, Cisco announced a new brand campaign focused on the theme “There’s Never Been a Better Time.” Using real stories from Cisco customers and partners, the brand set out to show that it was much more than just a networking innovator. With targeted social and earned media, employee celebrations and a three-pronged influencer program, the campaign was designed to position Cisco as the voice and advocating brand for “technology optimists.”
Social outreach was especially critical. So, to tie in the campaign’s social media presence, an accompanying hashtag, #NeverBetter, was created.
Cisco conducted an extensive listening campaign—before, during and after the campaign—to glean insights into current conversations, trends, sentiments and topics that were prevalent in the campaign's 12 targeted countries and regions, as well as globally. Those insights were used to shape respective country and regional social strategies.
The pre-listening reports pinpointed where, how and with whom Cisco’s new brand launch would resonate. As Cisco provided storylines and assets to country and regional leads to distribute on their social channels, the campaign team gained insight as to which of the planned stories would have the most impact in each region.
During the campaign, real-time listening was conducted to better understand any shifts that took place since its launch, when the greatest conversation spikes occured—and to see how the brand campaign resonated with key audiences. This allowed for effective measurement of existing social strategy and supported continual evolution to meet audience needs. In addition, Cisco tracked insights into trending hashtags and conversations by media type and key influencers.
The campaign generated 229.5 million impressions and 175,000 engagements on social media in the first month, surpassing the lifetime impressions and engagements of the brand's previous campaign. The campaign hashtag #NeverBetter trended on Twitter with a staggering amount of impressions, demonstrating the strength, reach and influence of Cisco’s efforts; in all, there were 81.8 million #NeverBetter impressions globally.
Honorable Mentions:
- FleishmanHillard - Content Compass
- Porter Novelli - The Laughing Cow Love Your Local Events