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Poly brought a small group of analysts and media to New York for the launch of their new Experience Center, right by Madison Square Garden. Branding is critical for maintaining visibility in a crowded market, and Poly has done a great job here. Their recent brand refresh was a good move, and while Plantronics is still in the picture, the branding is all Poly. While it remains to be seen how all this plays out with Hewlett Packard, the Experience Center is a great environment to showcase their broad portfolio.

Poly is still very much a product company, so if you’re into hardware and communications endpoints, this is the place to be. Visually, all the devices are great eye candy, but more importantly, this is where you can experience first-hand how all their products work, look, feel, etc.

Given that this is expensive real estate, and you only get one chance to make a first impression, I was kind of hoping to see some space set aside to showcase the company’s rich history. Poly has plenty of that in spades, but today’s younger tech buyers and influencers may not have a sense of their rich pedigree. Given how quickly companies rise and fall these days, the marketer in me says this could be a good way to distinguish Poly as a company you feel good about and confident doing business with.

That said, Poly is struggling - along with everyone else - to figure out the recipe for making hybrid work work. It’s a common theme among the vendors, as well as the events I’ve been attending recently. There are no right answers, but plenty of wrong answers if you don’t read the room correctly. They talked about their research showing a strong preference for workers to remain at home and not come back to the office very much - if at all.

I don’t doubt that sentiment for a second, but you can’t generalize across all verticals and all age groups, as well as personas. It’s a moving target, and that sentiment could easily swing the other way, especially for people who aren’t cut out to work in isolation at home full-time. In that regard, Poly is actually in a great position to make work from home a permanent fixture of this milieu we call hybrid work. Their offerings are precisely what these workers need, and we saw an impressive range of products built to make this a great experience. Without that, work from home wouldn’t be a great experience, and that makes the return to office scenario more palatable.

Of course, Poly must support both markets, so they also have a strong mix for office settings - including - you guessed it, desk phones. Maybe not for home use, but there are still plenty of office-based use cases for them. That said, there’s no doubt that video is the big focus here, and we saw demos for both personal desktop use and room-based meetings.

Also notable is Poly Lens, which can track all kinds of endpoints usage and performance, but I think it’s early days for that. We didn’t hear much about how this data is being used to help optimize IT operations or track feature adoption, but that will no doubt come. All told, there’s a lot to like here, and while most of this is familiar for analysts, I can see how the Experience Center strengthens the brand, and helps drive the top line. That’s my written take for now, and here’s a bit of what I saw.

CEO Dave Shull during the ribbon-cutting photo op.

Below, Beau Wilder with product updates, in-office endpoints - note the desk phone! - and home office endpoints - note the light bars on the edges of the screen to improve video image quality

Below, video screens showing how cameras automatically track the speaker, and compensate for speakers who are far away in a big room - lots of other cool features too. Nice homage to the NY’s iconic subway system for wayfinding across the floors inside the Experience Center. And… jazz time Monday night at the Flatiron Room - that’s a big draw for me!