Cisco, who this week entered the Android tablet market, is set to crank up their offerings in the Australian consumer market following a recent restructure that saw their Flip Video Camera grab 42 per cent of the pocket video camera market.
Following the appointment of Todd Lynton in December 2009 as the head of their consumer operations and former Canon Australia executive, Scott Jackson as Marketing Manager the Company has embarked on a major overhaul of their product categories with several new products slated for release during the next 12 months.
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| New Flip Displays In Dick Smith Stores |
One of the first tasks for Lynton, who had previously worked for Olympus, was to kick-start their Flip Camera market. Using bold point of sales displays in retail chains like Dick Smith and smaller shelf talkers in specialist camera stores Cisco set about educating consumers on the benefits of using the pocket-sized video camera.
A key component of their marketing has been the introduction of large displays in nine Dick Smith super stores and aisle end displays in up to 430 stores across Australia.
According to GFK data, Cisco is now the #1 brand in the emerging handheld video camera market where content is stored on either a built-in hard drive or an SD card.
However competitors and several retailers have told ChannelNews that the category is suffering and that several retailers are currently dumping stock. Among those discounting Cisco Flip cameras is Harvey Norman.
Another task for Lynton was to simplify the sale of Linksys routers and modems.
This was achieved by the introduction of in-store displays that broke their product offering down into Fastest N++, Fastest N+ and Fastest N. They also separated out their router and modem offering with new shelf displays that set their offerings apart from the likes of Netgear, Belkin and D Link.
“We are confident that we are doing the right thing. We needed to better educate consumers while making the purchase decision easier. With the Flip camera we were introducing a whole new category so it was important that we told consumers at a point of sale how the camera worked and the difference from a normal camcorder”.
Currently under review is the potential launch of Cisco’s new home video system which, if launched, will compete with new offerings from Skype. However Lynton was non committal on the potential launch of Cisco wireless audio products in Australia.
