Tellabs meets the law of unintended consequences

Most Australians have never heard the name "Tellabs", a company that has only seven employees Down Under.

Yet internationally, Tellabs is one of the world's largest vendors of networking equipment.

The problem facing Tellabs this time last year was how to get mindshare with Telstra employees who were probably more familiar with other vendors.

To solve the problem, Tellabs created one of most highly-targeted marketing strategies I've ever seen.

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They started advertising on a billboard directly outside the Telstra building at the corner of Lonsdale and Exhibition Streets in Melbourne.

Evidently the strategy worked, because Tellabs won a contract late last year to provide multi-service edge routers as part of Telstra's next-generation network build-out.

However that advertising probably had another slightly more disturbing effect ... as the law of unintended consequences kicked in.

Namely, a lot of Australians who don't work at Telstra but work around Lonsdale and Exhibition Streets in Melbourne now probably think Tellabs sells either mobile phones or dating services.