Sandwiched between ads meant to tempt consumers into buying everything from vitamins to sport utility vehicles, new TV ads from Nortel Networks are meant to attract anyone but consumers.
The ads, which feature music from The Beatles’ “Abbey Road” album, are directed at decision makers and technical influencers watching at home.
“Traditionally, you would think that we don’t need to be using broadcast advertising,” said Jeffrey Brooks, senior vice president of brand management at Nortel Networks. “But we found a lot of customers at small, medium and large corporations and enterprises didn’t have a sense of the broader portfolio of products and services that we provide.
“Television presented a quick and dramatic way to show what we provide,” explained Brooks.
The company’s new “Come Together” campaign, which is meant to signify the convergence of different networks, aims to heighten awareness of the company’s position in the emerging Internet revolution. Brooks said the company identified its two primary targets and then selected programming that best fit their demographics.
The TV ads appear on CNN International, CNBC International, the Bloomberg Financial Network, ESPN and ESPN Espagna. The ads also have been placed in high-profile national network TV programs, including ABC’s “Nightline” and “20/20,” CBS’ “60 Minutes,” “Chicago Hope” and “48 Hours” and NBC’s “Frasier,” “The Sunday Night Movie” and NBA telecasts.
Nortel’s campaign extends to business and technical print publications, as well. The company also has placed banner ads on high-traffic news, business, finance, travel and weather Web sites.
Other companies without a consumer product also have taken their advertising to mainstream channels. Cisco Systems Inc., an Internet networking company, last year ran a national TV campaign aired during sports, news and prime-time network programs as well as business and technology shows. The tagline in the ads was “Empowering the Internet generation.”
The goal of the campaign was to elevate Cisco’s brand as a leader in combined data, voice and video networks, to enforce its brand value to business customers and to extend its established business-to-business brand to a broader consumer audience in support of key partners, said the company.
Lucent Technologies Inc.’s advertising, with the tagline, “We make the things that make communications work,” also showcases its non-consumer products.
Larry Swasey, senior wireless analyst at Allied Business Intelligence, said the same type of strategy has been used by pharmaceutical companies peddling prescription medications on TV.
“The thinking is that the person who makes the business decisions is also at home watching TV,” said Swasey, who noted this type of strategy is often used in intensely competitive industries.
That idea is echoed in the comments of John Roth, vice-chairman and chief executive officer of Nortel, in a letter to Nortel employees that outlined the reasons the company was taking a more aggressive approach to the market.
“We are involved in an all-out war on the competitive front where we face competitors who themselves are using marketing muscle to capture mind share and market share,” said Roth. “However, advertising is only one element of our integrated marketing strategy. There’s no question that in today’s industry we’re engaged in real-time marketing warfare, and we’re going to be competing on every front, including advertising.
“We’re going to be very aggressive in how we fight the competitive battles for mind share, market share and revenue growth.”
