B2B, Male Millennial Opps: Cisco taps CMO amid spend increases (Score 72)

Cisco named Neville Letzerich CMO and VP of its security division, effective May 2021. Letzerich most recently served as CMO of Forescout Technologies, where he led a digital transformation and helped the company transition from a publicly traded company to private ownership. Cisco also hired digital marketing & content strategy director Karen Webb in April from Dell Technologies, where she managed field marketing, content strategy and sales enablement. In March, the company brought global experiential marketing head Emmanuel Gotis in from Microsoft, where he served as head of business development and global digital events. Keep an eye on this company because these hires will affect the marketing strategy and agency roster. 

According to Pathmatics, Cisco earned 1.8b impressions YTD through desktop display ads (38%), Facebook ads (24%), Twitter ads (12%), desktop video ads (10%), Instagram ads (9%) and mobile display ads (5%). It placed the majority (73%) of these ads site direct onto sites such as facebook.com, twitter.com, instagram.com, techtarget.com and finance.yahoo.com. It placed the remainder (27%) through a variety of indirect channels onto sites such as cnn.com, ebay.com, yahoo.com, washingtonpost.com and aol.com. It spent around $9.8m on digital display ads YTD, a 28% increase from $7.1m spent in this channel during the same time period of 2020. Full-year spend totaled $22.4m in 2020, a 47% jump the $11.7m in 2019. 

Magellan reports Cisco placed about 20 podcast ads over the last year. 

Per iSpot, Cisco spend around $3.5m on national TV ads YTD, a significant increase from $721.5k spent in this channel during the same time period of 2020. Full-year spend equaled $744.9k in 2020, a slight 1% decrease from $754.4k in 2019. It placed ads this year during programming such as "2021 NFL Draft," "VAX LIVE: The Concert to Reunite the World," "Anderson Cooper 360" and "SportsCenter."

Sellers-- Cisco mainly targets Gen-X and millennial men as well as other businesses. It reaches these demographics through digital display and national TV ads. The company has been ramping spend up in both channels. It also invests in print, OOH and local broadcast TV ads, per Kantar. Sellers should reach out offering relevant ad space. 

Agency & martech readers-- Start reaching out to Cisco because, as you know, new CMOs commonly conduct agency reviews. You will face competition from DWA Media (media AOR), Ogilvy (creative AOR) and FleishmanHillard (PR AOR).