By Tim Price, V.P. of Verbal Strategy at RiechesBaid

Admittedly I’m late to the game on this one. Although I just discovered Cisco’s foray into The Realm, it’s been live since March. So, while this isn’t a timely review, I felt it was appropriate to review such a valiant creative attempt.

Here’s the background. The Realm is an animated saga that dramatizes enterprise threats and pushes Cisco’s security solutions. The Realm’s episodes are produced using the comic book, er, graphic novel illustration style. The storylines revolve around a cast of “Defenders”—stereotypical comic characters right down to the blonde, buxom heroine in a skin-tight bodysuit named—wait for it—Vixa. Her special talents include sound-wave manipulation and subliminal encryption, although I’m sure she possesses others in the minds of her audience. The Realm is a techie’s wet dream. It plays into their love of the genre, tells a relevant story in dramatic fashion, and it has the “cool” factor that’s lacking in so many of the industry’s marketing efforts.

My gut reaction to The Realm from a creative standpoint was one of appreciation—it’s well produced, engaging and original. But I’ve come to think that it feels just a little too easy. Meaning, the concept is a slam-dunk and the graphic novel style is a no-brainer considering the audience. I’m left with the sense this novel will soon lose its novelty. If it hasn’t already.

A quick online search for The Realm supports my theory. The top hit isn’t The Realm itself, but Cisco’s blog about it—beginning with a post from Marie Hattar, Cisco’s vice president who presumably presides over The Realm. Her initial post espousing this Web 2.0 approach is followed by only a trickle of other posts that span just one month. Even more notably, as the most recent poster points out, most of the comments seem to come from Cisco employees. So it appears that the blog was being used mostly as an internal mechanism to bump up The Realm’s search results. And The Realm’s FaceBook page? A mere 42 fans.

Not helping matters is Hattar’s claim that Cisco invented “a new genre of animation—mixing a comic book medium with 2-D animation.” That’s quite an assertion. I’m sure I’ve seen this more recently, but I immediately think of a cheeky music video created in 1985 for the Norwegian pop band a-ha and their classic 80’s hit “Take On Me.”

That little trip down memory lane brings up a good point. The music video’s concept (and intrigue) was based on the interplay between a real person and a cartoon character. In the Realm, we find only fantasy players—which lacks a connection to Cisco’s positioning as “The Human Network.” There’s nothing human about the Realm, unless it’s explained away as the imagination of humans. Using a fantasy world to illustrate (no pun intended) security threats to the enterprise has its charms, but I wonder just how effective it is compared to a real-world approach. Or maybe the combination of a real-world-meets-fantasy approach.

It’s difficult to say whether or not The Realm is a success from a marketing standpoint because I’m not privy to Cisco’s definition of success for it. But, at the very least, Cisco deserves credit for taking a different approach than the industry norm. And I’m sure it has its fans. 42 of them, at the most recent count.