Cisco taps power of emotional marketing

Stephen Whiteside

Cisco, the technology enterprise, has found that business-to-business (B2B) marketing has a much stronger emotional component than is often assumed.

Business-to-business (B2B) products like servers, routers, digital signage and security software might not be the most probable candidates for emotionally-driven marketing.

Cisco, however, possesses compelling evidence to the contrary. In fact, the San Jose, California-based tech company – which plays in categories ranging from networking and data analytics to the Internet of Things and collaborative business solutions – has learned that intangible feelings are unusually potent in its main areas of expertise.

“What we found is, actually, the buyer of our technology is more emotionally connected to a brand than a consumer would be,” Karen Walker, senior vice president/chief marketing...

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