EightBlack.

Last week’s presentation at Web 2.0 by Jeanette Gibson from Cisco was a real eye opener. I’m going to try and track down the presentation but in the meantime here’s a snap shot of the session, titled “Blogging For Business”.

When Apple launched the iPhone, Cisco basically had a cow and hired as many attorneys as they could find. They were up in arms over the fact that Apple had decided to call their newest gadget an “iPhone”. Cisco allegedly owned the iPhone trademark (via the acquisition of a company called Infogear back in 2000) long before Apple had decided to roll out its dog and pony show.

Steve Jobs, who is no stranger to a legal shit fight, dug his heels and in turn, Apple went and hired their own bunch of very unpleasant lawyers (most of whom still have unresolved issues with their parents).

The only winner in all this was the lawyers. And it made for interesting reading for a few days.

But the amount of conversation it caused for both companies was staggering.

Then Cisco went and did something all grown up and mature like. Mark Chandler, the Chief Legal Counsel for Cisco decided to post on the Cisco blog (and there are 10 separate blogs at Cisco) why Cisco were pissed off and why they decided to take the legal path. Since his post, he’s received 311 comments and counting.

The smart people knew it was all a negotiating ploy.

In addition, John Earnhardt, Senior Manager for Govt Policy at Cisco wrote candidly (and more importantly replied to posts) about the iPhone saga.

Then an interesting thing started to happen. People from both sides started to engage in the conversation. The PR folks at Cisco starting getting nervous because all of a sudden they couldn’t control the conversation.

In fact, more people were tuned into this particular “thread” than were to Ciscos earnings announcements for that same period.

Cisco used blogging to manage and participate in the conversation on their terms. And it worked. And it’s why blogging and the creation of blogs, in my mind, will become far more important than the actual company website - which in many cases is nothing more than an egotistical store front built by the Highest Paid Person In The Organisation (HIPPO’s). We have Avinash Kaushik to thank for this acronym.

You’ll remember Avinash from this recent post.

Candidly, when I first heard about blogging, I wasn’t so sure. And even more unsure when we started our own. But now, after 12 months of posting to our own blog, I am totally convinced that this is the medium of the future.

The conversation with your market, your prospects, your clients, your critics, your competitors is the key. Period.

Subscribe to more posts like this

Related Posts:

Add to | | | View blog reactions

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 25th, 2007 at 12:11 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.