Case Study
Cisco breaks down barriers to reach a regional tech audience with Cisco Live 2019
Key results
3.2M
views, 3X vs. target
134K
Tweet engagements
+30%
increase in sales opportunities
The opportunity
Cisco Live is Cisco’s annual premier conference where partners, customers, and leading IT experts connect and learn about the latest technologies, discuss trends and share ideas on how technology can help solve the world's problems.
In 2019, Cisco Live was held in Melbourne and for the first time, it expanded its reach to include the broader Asia Pacific and Japan (APJC) region. The primary objective of the event was to engage with the “hard to reach” IT decision-makers (ITDMs) by sharing real insights from industry leaders and connecting them with the Cisco Live community.
Cisco realised two things about its target audience: Firstly, the ITDMs’ consideration was becoming harder to track, with more than 80% of their research being done online and anonymously. Secondly, they visited social media platforms regularly to get business and tech updates but had short attention spans.
While organising multiple physical events across the APJC region could address these issues, it would be almost impossible to execute.
Leveraging on these key audience insights, Cisco decided to partner with Twitter for Cisco Live Melbourne 2019 to develop a campaign that had successfully reached the ITDMs community across APJC while simultaneously using the right formats with thumb-stopping power to engage them.
The strategy
With 37 million Tweets1 related to technology in the APAC region annually, Twitter is truly the home to tech conversations. Cisco acknowledged that its ITDMs audience belong to this influential tech community on Twitter, who used the platform to follow the news, product releases, and events related to the forefront of transformational technologies.
To address the challenges with the ITDMs audience, Cisco Live needed a format that would immediately capture their attention when they were browsing. Partnering with Twitter, Cisco determined the ideal formats to capture the ITDMs’ short attention span regardless of the environments they are in: live-streaming and live engagement.
Cisco developed a launch plan across three phases: Tease (Pre-event), Reveal (Live-event), and Reinforce (Post-event).
In the first phase pre-event, Cisco drove registrations using the innovative auto-responder format: the customised Like to Remind which gave the audience reminders via push notification when the keynote sessions started. The objective was to create excitement and anticipation among those not attending the event in-person.
Phase two occurred on the day of the event, where Cisco ran Promoted Trend with First View to drive mass awareness of the live-streaming and the event hashtag. Cisco also had a dedicated Event Page, and used live video which live-streamed the keynotes to a broader APJC audience via Cisco’s Twitter handles across the region: @ciscoapac, @CiscoANZ, @cisco_in, and @Cisco_Japan.
To make the conversations more lively, a custom branded emoji was also created to accompany the event hashtag #CLMel. To encourage audience engagement during the event, Cisco used Media Polls, which also allowed the brand to receive real-time feedback on the content being streamed.
In phase three, Cisco used Like to Subscribe to take the conversation beyond the event where exclusive content and offers were sent to those who opted in when they engaged with the Tweet. Cisco also retargeted the specialised offers and content to those who had previously engaged with the live video and Like to Remind Tweets. This gave the audience access to the event's content, even if they didn’t watch the event live.
01
Building pre-event anticipation.
Using Like to Remind for audiences to register and to be notified about the broadcast on the day of the event let Cisco build anticipation for those not attending the event in-person.
02
Driving awareness.
Cisco used First View and Promoted Trend to drive mass awareness of the live-streaming and the event hashtag. To make the conversations more lively, a custom branded emoji was also created.
03
Going live.
Through a dedicated Event Page and live video, Cisco brought the broadcast to regional viewers via multiple handles simultaneously
04
Sustaining the conversation.
Audiences could opt in for specific content and offers after the event through Like to Subscribe. Cisco also retargeted those who had previously engaged with the live video and Like to Remind Tweets with exclusive content and specialised offers.
The success
Cisco achieved 3.2 million views in just two days — exceeding the campaign goal by 3X. With over 134K engagements during the campaign and 21K votes on the Media Polls, Cisco Live 2019 was a huge success amongst the target audience. Cisco’s sales opportunities grew by 30% during the week of the Cisco Live 2019 broadcast.
Post-event, Cisco sent 2.8K Tweets containing exclusive content and offers to those who had clicked Like to Subscribe, helping the brand to extend the conversation and engagement well beyond the duration of Cisco Live 2019.
From what we have done in the past to the level of virtual event broadcast sophistication, this was a massive jump! The team at Twitter was our bridge helping us with ideation, planning, and execution of this phenomenal event along with DWA and other partners.
1 Crimson Hexagon | Tracking period: 01/05/2018 - 01/05/2019 | APAC include: Australia, NZ, Japan, Korea, India, Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, HK, Taiwan
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