Cisco Partner Marketing Boss Tips Partners On Coming Cloud Marketing Blitz

Cisco's partner marketing chief said VARs will play a key role in Cisco's new "Built for the Network" marketing campaign, and that Cisco will also be arming partners with marketing resources for CloudVerse, the cloud framework and strategy it debuted in December.

Amanda Jobbins, Cisco vice president of global partner marketing, said partners will soon have resources they can tailor to specific campaigns around "Built for the Network," a new marketing blitz based on Cisco customer networking success stories.

Cisco began the campaign earlier this month with a series of television, print, digital, mobile and social media ads.

"The purpose of the campaign is not only to tell compelling stories, but to convey to customers that Cisco and its partner ecosystem are here to build the intelligent network that can make such innovation happen," Jobbins wrote in a January 30 post to Cisco's Channels blog.

Jobbins succeeded Luanne Tierney in the partner marketing role last summer, six months after Tierney's defection from Cisco to Juniper. According to Cisco, Jobbins' role is much expanded from the one Tierney had, and Jobbins told CRN in the fall that there would be much more alignment between how Cisco approaches partner marketing and Cisco's corporate marketing campaigns. While Tierney was part of Cisco's Worldwide Partner Organization (WWPO), Jobbins reports to Blair Christie, Cisco's chief marketing and communications officer.

Next up, said Jobbins, will be a new set of marketing resources specific to CloudVerse, and designed to help partners tell Cisco's cloud story more effectively.

"To increase your selling power and the power of your marketing, we'll be giving partners access to marketing, messaging, demand generation and customer assets that will help you in positioning the Cloudverse to customers," Jobbins wrote. "In the coming weeks, look for announcements on this blog and Cisco Partner Marketing Central as Cisco begins to stream out key cloud assets for partner use."

Cloud and social media are also expected to be big topics at Cisco Partner Velocity, the rebooted partner marketing conference Cisco is hosting in Las Vegas February 28 to March 1.