Cisco has been running a series of really cool television adverts globally focusing on ‘the human network’. Unlike many advertisements these days, Cisco is selling a brand not a product and I like that.

I have always loved when big brands like to promote their brand and not products, my favorites include Microsoft’s ‘Your Potential, Our Passion’ series, Total Oil’s ‘Our Energy is Your Energy’ and Phillips’ series of advertisements showing off the new MIR scanners (while the MRI ad is technically selling an MIR scanner, the target demographic (i.e. healthcare buyers) is so small that an advertisement of that magnitude is not justifiable to sell a product therefore its logical to assume that the brand is to promote positive connotations of the Phillips brand).

The Cisco advertisement consists of a series of images starting off with a shot of the earth rotating (this looks very similar to some stock video on iStockVideo - check that later) with a voice over (quoted below) describing the Human Network.   All this to the song ‘Teenage Wastelands’ makes for a very powerful advertisement.

I’m already a user of some Cisco kit - when I decided to go for a VoIP solution, I just had to have a Cisco system, c’mon Jack Bauer has one!  I cant really comment on whiter or not it is effective in selling their Unified, Mobile and Telepresence products.

The folk over at Cisco are doing very cool things. Communication is intrinsic to living and doing business. At last, Cisco, make the network human!

Go checkout their microstie which includes stories, solutions and more of the amazing advertisements here.

(Just a little note, if you are in the UK, be sure to check out the full length video on the site, the accent of the girl in the UK ad is far less cute than the one of the girl in the US territories advertisement!)

HUMAN NETWORK ANTHEM
(Cisco Television/Online advertisements, Spring 2007)

Welcome,

Welcome to a brand new day,
A new way, of getting things done.

Welcome to a place where maps are rewritten, and remote villages are included,
Were body language is business language.

Where people subscribe to people, not magazines,
And the team you follow, now follows you.

Welcome to a place where books rewrite themselves,
Where you can drag and drop people, wherever they want to go,
And where a phone doubles as a train ticket, plane ticket or lift ticket.

Welcome to a place where a wedding is captured, and recaptured, again and again,
Where a home video is experiences everywhere at once,
Where a library travels across the world,
Where businesses are born,
Countries are transformed,
And where we’re more powerful together,
Than we ever could be apart.

Welcome to the HUMAN NETWORK.