The irony of Juniper Networks’ new branding

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In 2006, networking giant Cisco Systems revamped it’s corporate logo and its branding. At the time, rival Juniper Networks, put out its own anti-Cisco branding marketing initiative, printing up T shirts with a press release type letter on the back.

The gist of the letter was that Juniper, unlike Cisco, wasn’t going to spend its money on new logos and branding. Instead Juniper (at the time) said it was sticking with what it does best, namely high speed networking.

Well, today three years later, in the midst of the worst economic slowdown of the information age, Juniper updated it logo.

Seems a bit ironic doesn’t it?

Three years ago, when the economy was booming they criticize Cisco for spending money on a re-branding effort and now today they do the same thing, albeit in much more difficult circumstances. They’ve had to eliminate jobs (including a few that I’m aware of in PR) and cut costs, yet they manage to find the money for a corporate re-branding.