Is This Really The SAP Approach to Marketing?
Last week I went to a local networking breakfast that hooked me with the following content promise: How to get people to pay to hear your message. Since we are all looking for ways to promote our business and as the message was intriguing, I thought it worthy to attend.
The speaker was a young SAP marketing executive who had been with the company for ten years. His credentials were most impressive and I eagerly settled in to absorb the wisdom he was about to impart.
He started by telling us at length how vital SAP was to the world economy, going as far to say, without even the faintest trace of a smile, the world would come to an end if SAP went out of business. Consequently, since SAP was ubiquitous he continued, the company has never really had to do any marketing other than an occasional whitepaper. However, with the introduction of Net Weaver and the considerable angst its introduction would cause customers, SAP decided that some degree of marketing was now required.
Instead of taking the usual, highly technical whitepaper path, our speaker came up with the career-changing idea of writing Net Weaver for Dummies. We now had the big idea of the meeting: How do you get someone to pay to hear your message? Write a book. OK. Interesting. Unfortunately, at this point the presentation started careening downhill while gathering considerable speed.
Rather than champion the idea of creating value for the customer through this book, the word the presenter used over and over again was “Brainwash”. We were told that ostensibly the book was positioned as a helpful manual however it was simply poorly written marketing collateral designed to indoctrinate readers. Not surprisingly, the book did well and led our presenter to author several other non-Dummies books including a business-school book for MIS classes, a collaborative tribute to the SAP CEO and a tome about transforming business networks.
On the surface, one would think that each of these books has merit and I am sure they do. However, what has affected me still several days later, is the presenters’ continual emphasis that the benefit of these books is to brainwash the reader into behaving the way that SAP wants them to: college students, current customers, business executives all being brainwashed by this simple marketing tactic that we were told we should all employ. Now, I am not naïve and certainly understand the purpose of marketing in any form is to convince and persuade. However, never have I heard such a self-congratulatory flouting of this idea.
He closed by saying that all business books “suck”. But, they were so simple to write that even we could do it and by doing so, we would become experts and thereby grow our business. Thank you very much. I’ll be here until Tuesday. Don’t forget to tip your waitress.
As someone who has been doing real marketing communications for the past 20+ years all I can say is that I was stunned. Does this very smart, highly capable fellow have absolutely no idea about what has been transforming marketing over the past several years? No clue that bottom up collaborative communication and engagement with customers has replaced antiquated command and control strategies?
Of course this is not going to hurt SAP. Their customers are not going to revolt, they are not going to go out of business and the world is not going to come to an end. However, social media is giving power to customers. This in turn is forcing even the largest company to reconsider the way it engages. In SAP’s case, we have brilliant PhDs in Computer Science in senior marketing positions that are actually now having to market. The resultant, highly cynical approach just goes to show have far some still have to go.
« T.G.I. Friday’s, Social Media and Woody | Home | McKinsey Study Highlights: How Companies are Benefiting from Web 2.0 »
Comments
This SAP speaker sounds a bit pre-Copernican if you ask me. Last week I attended a webinar on the topic of Cloud Computing. The SAP speaker started out by defining IT, and the respective cloud computing service providers, using the traditional categories of processes, applications, platforms and infrastructure. I was immediately confounded: so where do I put SAP - just an Apps company without regard to their process or platform abilities? In the evolution/revolution paradigm I think we know where to categorize SAP.
Leave a Comment