Brocade vows to fix 'awareness issue' with marketing push

Vendor claims it has kept too quiet in the past, and promises to make more noise in order to claw business from rivals

Brocade has vowed to boost its marketing efforts in order to win more business after conceding that not enough people know about the firm's products.

The vendor hinted that a new chief marketing officer is set to join the firm in the coming months to bolster its efforts, after identifying that it is losing out by keeping quiet.

Speaking at its Partner Summit in Prague, the firm's chief executive Lloyd Carney (pictured) told CRN that having a more obvious market presence is high on his firm's to-do list. Carney joined the vendor in January, replacing outgoing boss Michael Klayko.

He said: "We are an engineering company, I am an engineer and most of the guys are engineers - we don't do a good job at marketing, it is just not in our DNA.

"We have hired an individual on a consulting basis who will [eventually] work full time. He is an exemplary marketer and he is going to help drive our marketing story. There are simple things about brand awareness to do. Most of the customers we sell our Ethernet fabric to did not even know we had it until we called on them.

"When the phone is ringing because they want your product, you have good marketing. If you are having to call people all the time, you don't have good marketing. Right now, we are having to do too much outbound calling and not enough people are calling us.

"You will see print advertising, event advertising, specific ad programmes, customer outreach done with partners, as well as online."

Progress

Brocade's head of global channels Regan McGrath gave partners a progress report, in which marketing scored an amber level, meaning more needed to be done.

He said: "The number-one question I get asked around the world is ‘what are you going to do to solve your awareness problem?' A lot of customers know we are in the fibre channel space and know we are in the SAN space, but they do not even know we sold IP... and that is a shame. There is no easy solve.

"The great news is, with the new CEO and new [incoming] CMO, we are focusing our efforts on this area."

McGrath added that technical enablement was another area that needed work, scoring an amber/red level on his progress report. He said that the firm has not done a good enough job at training customers on its technology and that it has been guilty of holding partners' hands too long.

On his progress report, he added that field engagement, product innovation and ease of doing business all scored green, meaning he was pleased with activities in those areas.