SAP has some advertisements out on TV. Dennis mentioned that he had seen some on Sky Sports, and I’ve read that they are on the box in the US too.
Dennis commented:
But then it has to get through the public perception of SAP as a player for the large company alone. At least that’s what it thinks it has to do. You may have noticed its recent TV advertising, which I first saw on late night Sky Sports.
Personally, I think it’s a waste of money. Do the general public care about SAP? I doubt it very much. The people who really care are other vendors, their distribution channels, industry observers and blog readers. SAP would be far better served connecting to ‘on the ground influencers’ who could tell the SAP story for it.
I have no idea whether it makes sense to have SAP advertisements at half-time in an American Football game ( John would tell me that at this point I should say Go Packers!) But I think Dennis is dead right about the “on the ground influencers”…
According to the SAP marketing folks the TV ads are working.
“I can tell you that just based on historical data, we are very, very pleased with the results of this campaign so far, not only in terms of the number of folks that are coming to the page in general but also the amount of time they are spending on the landing page and looking at the different customer success stories,”
The feedback from the punters is mixed, some pro some against. “I can think of a 100,000 ways to spend that money far more effectively.” vs “I see this campaign as a complement to their efforts in the IT and Finance trade magazines and shows”
I’ve watched the adverts on internal SAP TV. I think they are mildly funny. I especially enjoy this one.
Did I hear that right?
SAP has affordable software business management software for a midsize company like ours?
I’d give you a hug right now
If I wasn’t so afraid of HR
I’ve seen lots of banner ads, and the new SAP UK small and medium sized business website is really rather neat from an aesthetic point of view. Nice design, videos etc….
I received an email the other day (first mail in weeks that wasn’t spam) saying that Vendorprisey was becoming a bit of a “isn’t SAP great fest”, and that in order to remain “real” I should take off the ABAP coloured spectacles….or some thing to that effect… so herewith a mildish rebuke…
What I don’t see
I understand that SAP should run a traditional media campaign at the SME companies in manufacturing. The CEO’s and CFO’s of mid-size companies in Greenbay watch Football. (By the way Miller runs SAP, if positive association helps)
But SME doesn’t just mean small manufacturer building high precision compressors, or fast growing niche pharma companies. Yes, that is a market SAP should win and absolutely dominate. The manufacturing and supply chain demands of those companies should be SAP’s bread and butter.
Yet there is more to the SME than the global middelstand. If SAP wants more cool, hip fast-growing companies like Timeout and Yak Pak running SAP and then I think the marketing approach needs to be fundamentally different.
Jonathan Schwartz at Sun makes the point that today’s start up are tomorrow’s fortune 500 companies. He realises that Sun needs to do a better job at targetting them, so he ran some sessions aimed at startups and small companies.
But there was a troubling, and consistent message. It usually went like this, “wow, this is a great idea… thank you, Sun. But hey, why are you guys here? I thought you built big expensive stuff that ran in banks?”
That is SAP’s challenge too.
When your 2.0 startup goes for a couple of million post seed funding, I’d like your VC to be saying that you need to get in place some basic systems so that you manage your cashflow better. SAP has something we recommend.
SAP could be the software that runs the business of 2.0. But if we are going to get the traction with the next eBay or whatever it is, we need to be talking the right language. Conversations, not lectures.
A simple example: I would have liked to embed the advert here, in this post, but I can’t find it anywhere on the SAP site with an external access. hmm. Where is the YouTube version? Come to think of it, If the ads were really good, I know plenty of pro-sap bloggers would have them on a side bar.
And while we are at it I’d like to see an SAP channel 9 and channel 10. We have masses of interesting and passionate people, and great engaging content but so much of it remains buried or hidden behind the firewall. Almost everyday there is a clip about customer x,y or Z, or cool project abc on the internal TV, but this doesn’t seem to seep out beyond the confines of starship enterprisey.
Zoli picked up on the Microsoft SME marketing campaign, he knocks it for poor execution, but it is at least an innovative approach.
I wonder if we could get a couple of solution managers at SAP to what the X-box folks have done. As Scoble puts it:
The enterpriseyest of the them all, IBM, is in second life. And jokes about the mainframe on YouTube.
Craig and the SDN guys get community and conversation, but we need a lot more of that sort of thinking.
Think Gapingvoid, and re-read the cluetrain.
I don’t just want to see SAP mentioned more on Techcrunch. I would like TechCrunch runnning SAP. And Vinnie, how about this poster in Frankfurt airport?
Vendorprisey 
I see lots of startups using Sun technologies – but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a startup using SAP. Why would you when you could just go to salesforce.com or netsuite?