Ok be honest fellow gadget-lovers: What did you know of the Cisco iPhone before Apple released their iPhone? As a web marketing guy I’ve been thinking that Cisco should write Apple a thank-you card for all of the publicity created for a rather run-of-the-mill wifi phone. Today I see they did one better. I saw this ad on the homepage of CNET today:
To me this is hilarious. I’m always amazed being in the internet advertising business how Linksys and many other large tech companies seem to have no idea that their main potential buyers are online. Many still think that the best advertising they can ever get is print in the New York Times!
Don’t get me wrong, Apple stomping all over Cisco’s registered trademarks makes Steve Jobs nothing short of a jeans-and-black-turtle-neck wearing street thug. I suppose that one could argue that Cisco was trying to capitalize on the i-anything phenomenon that Apple created with the iPod, but where is that going to stop? Apple would have to sue 1/3 of all tech manufacturers!
Big picture: it’s too bad that it took Apple stealing the iPhone trademark and handing Cisco a ton of free publicity for them to finally get advertising online. Maybe other tech companies can learn from this.
