Comments on: Getting on the B2B Brandwagon

By: Holly Wild

Holly Wild — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 17:11:59 +0000

Makes sense… acquisitions for Cisco business is the building block for Cisco’s future growth and competitive edge.

By: Suzanne Lowe

Suzanne Lowe — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 19:35:14 +0000

Elaine, Glenn, and Paul: you’ve correctly pointed out the relationship between “effort” and “results” in the B2B branding game — and correctly implied that the two aren’t always synonymous. Now I have a question: what happens when the CEO is NOT a good storyteller?

By: Glenn Gow

Glenn Gow — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 15:05:59 +0000

Suzanne, I have a post on the same study “B2B Branding, How Important Is It?” on why brand-building should matter to B2B CEOs.
However, to answer your specific question about who’s putting a lot of effort into global branding, I agree with Paul Barsch that Cisco is a candidate.
It turns out that Quelch talks about branding in another post on Ingredient Branding, and my comments on that post address the example of Cisco:
“I agree with Dr. Quelch that ingredient branding is important and is becoming more common.
It even happens with mega-brands becoming ingredients within other brands. His example of Nippon Airways and the Dreamliner is a good one. Another example is AT&T and Cisco. (Full disclosure: Cisco is a Crimson client). I’d argue Cisco is a bigger business brand than AT&T and yet, Cisco offers a “Cisco Powered” Quality of Service certification for qualified service providers. This is a “win” for both parties:
* AT&T has qualified for this ingredient branding which enables AT&T to brag about the quality of its managed service offered to businesses.
* This is a win for AT&T because the Cisco brand carries such significant weight with business (and technical) decision-makers. AT&T can more effectively gain mindshare via a quality certification, and differentiate their offering from other service providers.
* This is also a win for Cisco because it creates a closer partnership between the two companies, and it extends Cisco’s brand to the business buyer. This brand extension helps Cisco position products more effectively to (non service provider) businesses as well.
I also argue that Cisco is much better at marketing to businesses than AT&T. Not only do they have a stronger brand, but they know how to leverage that brand. The key to ingredient branding is that both parties win, and Cisco has created a mechanism to enable a win-win with AT&T, and a variety of service providers. The smarter company drives the branding, whether it’s as an ingredient or not.”

By: Paul Barsch

Paul Barsch — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 14:04:40 +0000

While also a little bit B2C with some acquisitions, Cisco is another solid B2B example. There are few better storytellers than John Chambers.

By: Elaine Fogel

Elaine Fogel — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 13:49:38 +0000

Good post, Suzanne. I can’t offer any examples right now, but wanted to add that this approach is important – not just to large companies – but to small and mid-sized ones, too. The smaller companies often don’t consider their “big-picture” brand, perhaps thinking they’re too small for it. In my opinion, small business branding is even more important to help them stand out from the crowd.