More Cisco product placement

Cisco has a regular product placement position on 24, which is my favorite TV show now that the Sci-Fi Channel is defunct.

Throughout the series, CTU had the distinctive ring of a Cisco VoIP phone. (Now that CTU is defunct and Chloe is a housewife, I haven’t heard many phones ring this year.)

Two years ago, Cisco made a big deal about promoting its high-end videoconferencing (dubbed TelePresence) during an international crisis during 24.

On Monday night’s episode (Season 7, Episode 16) the FBI made a big deal about getting the POTUS to electronically sign a document using a Cisco WebEx (the videoconferencing company that Cisco bought in 2007). As the Cisco press release touts:

Tune in to Fox's award winning series 24 Monday night, March 30, 9/8c in the U.S and Canada to see a powerful scene featuring Cisco WebEx virtual collaboration tools in action.…

Fans continue to be excited by this year's action-packed Fox TV series 24. And, the action continues with Cisco WebEx taking a starring role in Episode 16. The story line has President Taylor and the FBI working against the clock and using Cisco WebEx virtual collaboration tools to sign a secure digital pardon in order to save the day!

About the only place where I agree is that this season is better than most. The collaboration tools are not part of a “powerful scene,” just an obvious product plug.

It’s not like this is cutting-edge technology. Digital signatures were introduced in Acrobat 4.0, a decade ago this April. The issue has always been the law (and habit), not the technology.

Still, as with all product placement, I have to hand it to the Fox producers for getting revenues from its series that still gets paid even if commercials are skipped and episodes are posted to GooTube.

Even less Motorola leadership

After a big announcement like that of Ed Zander’s resignation, there are always other shoes that drop. Monday morning’s paper had a tiny blurb that Motorola CTO Padmasree Warrior had resigned, with the speculation that she’d left because she was tied to Zander’s failed strategy of seamless mobility. Sure enough, her Motorola biography (now gone but cached by Google) listed her efforts there:

An engineer at heart with a true knack for business, Padmasree’s charter is to drive innovation, prioritize technology programs and accelerate creative research to commercialization. Padmasree's operational responsibility is to lead Motorola’s global team of 26,000 engineers and direct Motorola Labs, Motorola’s software, emerging early-stage businesses and the corporation’s intellectual property portfolio.

Padmasree is recognized internationally as the thought leader who shaped the industry vision of “seamless mobility” for next generation communications. She is credited with crafting much of Motorola’s strategy around seamless mobility; to deliver easy uninterrupted access to everything people want in a flat and mobile world.

This morning’s paper brought news that she’d become CTO at Cisco, presumably part of its effort to expand its influence in mobile communications. There was universal admiration at how she’d traded up after only one day of unemployment. Warrior herself blogged at Cisco about how she welcomes the opportunities of driving its platform strategies. (Certainly it’s been a long time since Motorola drove any industry platforms).

However, Brad Reese, a Cisco-focused blogger, pilloried the decision to hire Warrior, blaming her for commoditizing Motorola’s RAZR and failing to respond to the challenge of the iPhone.

I know far less about Cisco that Mr. Reese, but as someone who follows the mobile phone industry, I’m not sure how much credit (or blame) the CTO gets for Motorola’s recent innovation results. Did the CTO have line-of-business control? How much did the CEO control the allocation of resources. And as for getting beaten by the iPhone, I think a lot of very well run mobile phone companies were left scrambling when the iPhone came out.

In my opinion, the success or failure of a CTO depends not only on his/her vision, but also on the charter bestowed by the CEO. And I’d bet a week’s pay that John Chambers is not going to let anyone commoditize his main Cisco brand (even though the Linksys brand is all about competing in commodity markets).

Repositioning the videoconference

Last month I went to Cisco to see a demo of its high-end videoconferencing system, introduced to the world last October. I saw a demo of both the Cisco TelePresence 3000 — with three 65" HDTV screens and a list price of $299K — and the Cisco TelePresence 1000, with only one screen at a mere $79K. As advertised, it was a lifelike experience, and my colleagues and I agreed that it was a great way to run a meeting if you could afford the capital cost and the bandwidth.

Part of Cisco’s effort to justify the $300K (and the 6-9 Mbps to run the three screens) is avoid using the term “videoconference,” which covers everything from PC-based solutions to other high-end solutions. Its two major HighDef rivals take a different tack. HP takes the V-word head-on, proclaiming “HP Halo: Light years beyond video conferencing.” Only Polycom — the longtime leader in low-end solutions and overall unit sales — refers to its HD products as “Professional - High Definition Video Conferencing.”

Of course, “videoconference” is part of the lexicon and “TelePresence” is not. Imagine my surprise last week when I was watching an episode of 24, and presidential chief of staff “Tom Lennox” (former childstar Peter MacNicol) comes on screen and announces to VP Noah Daniels (Powers Booth):

The Russian president is calling for you in the TelePresence suite. He’s insisting on a face to face.

How about that? With two sentences, we have

1. an introduction to the buzzword;
2. the implication that this is something important for the heads of state of major powers to use for their most important meetings; and
3. the suggestion that a foreign president considers using the Cisco videoconferencing product as equivalent to a “face to face.”

Other than dropping the brand name — and the lingering Cisco logo on the TV screen — the product placement seemed natural and very effective. Looking at the Russian official arrayed on the screen (and over the shoulder of the US team) both made for a dramatic confrontation and showed the technology’s potential.

Cisco has a Flash clip of the sequence on their website, which also shows clips from an October promo of TelePresence 3000 on the Fox TV show Vanished (whatever that is) as well as placement of other Cisco products on 24. (For hardcore 24 fans, the distinctive ringing of the telephones at CTU Los Angeles is recognizably that of a Cisco VoIP phone). The level of product placement in 24 has drawn complaints from fans, but the use of a TelePresence suite seems more plausible than the claim that CTU network is impervious to attack.

Still, I wonder about the efficiency of using a consumer TV show as a way to sell a high-end business product. Of course, early in the product cycle, the goal is brand (and even category) awareness rather than closing a specific sale. And it could be relatively cheap: one guess is that the placement costs $150K — less than one TelePresence 3000.

Photo credits: all pictures taken from ”24 (Season 6): 1:00 a.m.-2.00 a.m.”

Technorati Tags: Cisco, videoconferencing

iPhone Lawsuit Settlement

Apple and Cisco settled their iPhone trademark lawsuit, but (as of yet) nobody knows why. There are three explanations that I find plausible.

1. The lawyers agreed that they are distinct markets, as in this AP story:

   “Although Cisco is making the point that we don't know what the future brings, it just strikes me that their markets are plenty distinct, and there's probably room for them to find peaceful cooperation,” said James Pooley, an intellectual property litigator and adjunct law professor at the University of California at Berkeley. “They're not naturally going to be stepping on each other's toes very much, so cooperation makes a whole lot of sense.”

2. Cisco decided to settle for whatever Apple is willing to give — likely better than what they offered on Jan. 8.
3. If today (or 3 months ago) you asked someone what an iPhone is, more consumers would say Apple than Cisco, undercutting Cisco’s claim to have established and protected its trademark.

The last two points are made by the New York Times story:

“Cisco had to provide access to the trademark to Apple if it wanted to achieve the highest value for the name. There was no potential second buyer who would have equaled Apple’s desire for the iPhone mark,” said Alan Fisch, an intellectual-property lawyer at Kaye Scholer in Washington.

He added that Cisco also faced the reality that consumers associated the name more with Apple.

“The iPhone name has been informally synonymous with an anticipated Apple phone for years prior to the product’s formal announcement,” he said.

I hate to say it, but Steve Jobs’ game of chicken seems to be vindicated. Of course, we need to hear what the actual terms are — perhaps in the next Cisco or Apple 10-Q.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Cisco, iPhone, trademarks