Optima Communications Systems, Inc.: Avaya Goes Mainstream TV?

(MARKETING NOTE TO SELF: People really, really like being on TV)

Check out Avaya social media chatter this week and you'll quickly see that Avaya was recently on The Learning Channel's reality TV show "Cake Boss." It's been all the buzz on Twitter and Facebook - not just with Avaya employees, customers and partners, but even analysts and reporters are commenting about their 'cameos' on the show. It's amazing. In fact, I think this should be added as one of "The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing" - "If you get someone on TV, they'll go nuts creating buzz around it."

Now, I may not be a huge fan of reality TV, but you can't argue that this isn't a good step for the New Avaya.

Let me back up and explain... If you go back to my May 17th post, you can read about our "Think Big" launch event for Small- and Medium-sized Enterprises where this all started. As part of this event, we invited Buddy Valastro, star of the hit TLC TV series "Cake Boss" to participate in a customer roundtable to talk about our IP Office products.

And, of course, we ordered a cake.

Thanks to the creative thinking of Cake Boss, they came up with the idea of building our gear into the cake and placing a live video call via..., well,THE CAKE. Next thing we know, Buddy isn't just speaking at our event, but Avaya gets woven into an episode of the actual show. Here, look:

Buddy and Alan Baratz:

This is an "interactive" cake, folks:

And, well, this is a cake video call:

Besides seeing myself for 1.5 seconds in the audience on the show, here's why i think this is really cool. It's another step in the right direction for the New Avaya. Let's face it, many people still think of Avaya as a stodgy, old school, Ma Bell-spin off telephone company. But given the new direction of the company - our new tagline: "Avaya. The Power of We.", our focus on business collaboration, all the cool new technology (See Flare, web.alive, ACE, Social Media Manager - just to name a few), 'old school' is clearly no longer what Avaya is anymore. I mean, there's just no way Avaya is mainstream enough to make reality TV five years ago... pure and simple.

And to celebrate, we hosted employee viewing parties across Avaya's campus earlier today with (you guessed it, more cake). Here are more photos: