AI Messaging Strategy

When AI went mainstream, we built the story that held it all together

In early 2023, AI was everywhere. Cisco had breakthrough capabilities but a fragmented story, with dozens of business units, 80,000 employees, and no single narrative. My job was to fix that.

The Approach

  1. Discovery - Interviewed technical leaders, mapped capabilities, studied competitors

  2. Framework - Built a five-pillar AI messaging framework focused on outcomes, not features

  3. Implementation - Created spokesperson maps, ran executive training, launched shared asset hub

The Results

This foundation became the launchpad for two major initiatives:

  • The AI Readiness Index — a global benchmark and thought leadership platform

  • The Cisco.com AI site — the company's public AI narrative hub

In three months, we shifted the conversation from "what AI is" to "what AI does for people" and gave every Cisco storyteller the tools to keep that conversation going.