CASE STUDIES

Cisco and HP SAN Campaign

Background

In 2006 Cisco & HP created a partnership to promote their joint offering of Storage Area Network products across Europe, Middle East, Africa & Asia.

Objective

Create a joint-branded campaign to support and drive the sales channels for SAN to achieve sales of $3.2 million in year 1.

Our approach

Mi liberty was selected in a four-way pitch to brand this partnership. Cisco and HP have such strong brands and tight guidelines, which meant this project very much started on the back foot with the do’s and don’ts.

Cutting through that red-tape, we spent time with the key decision makers within Cisco & HP – to understand their knowledge and insight. We also spent time with the indirect channel and also with end users.

Following the research & understanding stage we submitted our evaluation and proposal highlighting the main concerns of how the two brands could successfully be positioned together for this campaign. SAN was just one product group that Cisco & HP were due to partner in, so we had to understand the other product areas and make sure this campaign could be differentiated clearly from the rest.

We brought the two brands together with a strap line that gave the impression that this was a natural evolution; two great companies with a deep heritage coming together to deliver the best offer on the market but in harmony. This was addressing all the fears of the market. The strap line we created was Cisco & HP – the natural selection.

To implement this we chose a comparison to the product with nature, so if speed was important we featured a cheetah; intelligence, a monkey; agility, a giraffe.

Deliverables

The branding was launched across the territories in late 2006 and we delivered a number of tools such as; online advertising, E mail Launch Events, Video showcase, Intranet Site Sales tools.

Results

The campaign was warmly received and highly praised. Cisco and HP reached the sales target within the first 10 months of the campaign.

download case study