wax&wires

A Cisco Home Stereo?

Have you ever seen an advertisement on TV where you weren’t really sure who they were marketing to, or maybe even what they were marketing? That’s the Cisco ads to me. There’s one thing to be said for brand image and familiarity, but I’m not sure any head honcho at a Fortune 1000 company is going to make the call on what network he uses based on a TV commercial he saw last week. Isn’t there a more efficient way to reach your target audience than with a mass TV ad? Meanwhile, nobody in the blue collar world has any idea what Cisco would even do for their company if they had one to begin with. At least when I see a commercial for a movie that looks cool, I know I’m supposed to go watch that movie; or when I see a Geico commercial, I know I’m supposed to switch to Geico car insurance to save 15% or more. But after watching a Cisco commercial, I’m not sure what they want from me. A pat on the back maybe, or a thank you card for making the world work? So I enjoyed your commercial, what’s my action step? If I’m not a company, what am I supposed to do with this?

Well now everything is starting to make sense. Cisco has been gradually increasing their brand recognition to the general public through a myriad of television ads over the past few years. You would have to surmise that there was some big play they were setting up that would pertain to the general populous. Now we know that Cisco has plans to reveal a new digital stereo at the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show (January 8-11, 2009). The stereo is said to be network ready, possessing the ability to move music around the house (much like AirTunes) in a way superior to current products on the market. The end goal is to make obsolete the need for tethering your devices to your computer. So imagine having a networked media player that would just access your media files through the net from wherever you were, making portable storage limitations a thing of the past. This is Cisco senior vice president Ned Hooper’s dream.

Cisco also has plans to release a version of its Telepresence video conferencing set up, which we’ve also seen plenty of on their commercials, to consumers. I don’t see dedicated telepresence systems taking off until they can do something that iChat AV can’t. So until they do 1080p, or incorporate hologram smellovision, I think most consumers will stick with computer chatting.

I am excited to see what Cisco brings to the table for the consumer market, and how that comptetion pushes other tech companies to raise the bar.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 31st, 2008 at 9:27 am. It is filed under wires and tagged with home audio. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.