Client: Cisco South Africa
Period: May 2024 to April 2025
Approach: Media relations, proprietary research, executive profiling, events, paid and earned integration
The Challenge
Cisco has spent forty years building the networking infrastructure that large parts of the internet run on. In South Africa it protects enterprises, government agencies and critical infrastructure, and both security and AI sit at the centre of that portfolio. None of which registered, because the market had already decided what Cisco was.
By 2024 the two conversations dominating South African technology media were cybersecurity and artificial intelligence, and rival brands were setting the terms in both. Cisco was still being read as a networking business. The capability was never in question. The visibility was, and a company absent from the two stories a market cares about is a company that gets shortlisted less often.
The Hook
You do not argue your way into a conversation already in progress. You bring something nobody else has.
So rather than pitch product capability into a crowded space, HLS anchored every major moment on proprietary research, localised for South Africa and tied to whatever was already on the national agenda. That gave journalists a reason to call rather than a release to ignore, and it positioned Cisco as an authority on the issue instead of a participant in the debate.
Messaging was written for two rooms. C-suite and IT decision makers heard that the platform is the foundation for resilience and growth in an uncertain economy. Public sector and policymakers heard that Cisco is an ally in building a digitally inclusive and cyber secure South Africa.
The research behind it ran on three tracks. A competitor and media landscape audit established where rivals were leading and which titles and formats needed reclaiming. Agenda mapping locked the messaging onto four national priorities covering AI readiness, cyber resilience, digital skills and infrastructure modernisation, at a moment when the Information Regulator was recording more than 150 data breach notifications a month, up from 56 a month the year before, and the average local breach was costing R49.45 million. A catalogue of the client’s own research completed the picture, including a Cybersecurity Readiness Index finding that only 5% of South African businesses had reached a mature stage of preparedness.
The Line
The year ran on planned thematic peaks with sustained activity between them.
May 2024 opened with the Cybersecurity Readiness Index and its finding that only 5% of local businesses were genuinely prepared. Its relevance to the national agenda drove wide coverage, and then something more useful happened: other brands started repurposing the findings in their own communications. Cisco’s data became the reference point for an argument the company no longer had to make itself, carrying it well past anything HLS placed directly.
July brought the Elevating Africa’s Cyber Resilience white paper, launched through a roundtable with Charmaine Houvet and attended by Mudiwa Gavaza of Business Day Spotlight, Chris Tredger of ITWeb Africa and Kathy Gibson of IT-Online. The format bought a depth of engagement no press release was going to buy.
October was Cybersecurity Awareness Month, run through partnerships with ITWeb and Brainstorm. HLS repurposed the white paper into two fresh angles, covering the gender gap in cybersecurity skills development and the risk of device sharing at home, where 31% of parents allowed children unsupervised access to work devices along with the passcodes. That month alone delivered 21 dedicated articles.
November put an executive on stage at Africa Tech Fest, preceded by a media breakfast that pre-briefed journalists on the AI vision, sustainability partnerships and the Splunk acquisition.
December widened the story from security to AI with the AI Readiness Index. January 2025 made the commitment physical, announcing the Webex and Security Points of Presence in South Africa as proof of local infrastructure investment rather than local marketing spend.
Customer storytelling carried the commercial proof. The Capitec deployment put cloud managed Meraki networking across more than 850 branches and free customer Wi-Fi in front of 23 million clients, making large scale digital transformation concrete rather than theoretical. Purpose led work included the ForgeX incubation launch in Johannesburg.
The Sinker
Share of voice held at number one in security and networking across the full 12-month period, while AI moved from third place to second.
- Share of voice measures how much of a category’s total media conversation belongs to one brand. First place means that across a year of South African security and networking coverage, Cisco was quoted, cited and covered more than any competitor in the market
- Second place share of voice in AI-related coverage by the end of the period, up from third, in the newest and most contested category in the market
- 100% of Cisco’s top 75 placements in a single quarter landed in top tier business media rather than specialist technology press
- Security coverage volume up 6.7% quarter on quarter
- Signature stories secured with Capitec Bank, the visit of EVP Francine Katsoudas, and the CDA ForgeX EDGE Centre launch, each reported as a full feature in a national title rather than a product mention
- Two podcasts launched in a single quarter, opening a format the brand had not previously used
It wins by supplying the evidence rather than joining the argument. Competitors spent the year pitching capability into the AI and cybersecurity conversations while Cisco supplied the data those conversations ran on, to the point where rival brands were quoting its findings back into the market. The share of voice numbers show what that bought. Cisco held first place in the categories it already led and climbed from third to second on AI inside 12 months, which is the difference between being asked to comment and being the reason there is something to comment on. The audience shifted with it. In one quarter, every one of the top 75 placements sat in business media rather than trade press, in front of the executives and public sector decision makers who sign infrastructure contracts. A 40-year reputation for networking stopped being a ceiling and became the credential that made the research credible.
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