We're talking about building a major technology brand at scale with Alicia Tillman who is
the chief marketing officer of SAP.
I'm Michael Krigsman.
I'm an industry analyst and the host of CXOTalk.
Hey, Alicia.
How are you?
Hi, Michael.
It's nice to see you.
Likewise.
Tell us about your role at SAP as Chief Marketing Officer.
I run the global marketing organization at SAP, so development and management of our
brands, sponsorships, integrated media, events, all of our campaigns, pipeline, demand generation,
so all of the functional capabilities that you could imagine to shape the brand of SAP
and use the brand of SAP to help drive financial success that we have in place at a board level
here.
Now, you have just been recognized as the 16th most valuable brand in the world.
Tell us about that.
The annual BrandZ most valuable brand ranking was just released.
We're very happy about this.
Even if we look at the past two years, we've grown five spots on the survey.
Our brand value has grown by $12 billion, so that's a 27% increase in brand value from
a couple of years ago.
If you just simply look at it from what we earned last year, that's over $200 million
that we're growing the brand month-by-month over a 12-month period.
It's pretty exciting for us.
The BrandZ study looks both at the financial success of the company as well as the brand's
focus in helping to drive that financial performance which, in a lot of ways, is a measure of your
marketing effectiveness and how well you're telling the story in a way that's relevant
to your consumers.
So, we're very, very proud of this.
With all the thousands of companies that exist in the world and to be known as the 16th most
valuable, it's quite an incredible accomplishment that we're feeling very proud about.
Alicia, I think the question is, how do you do it?
How do you grow a brand?
As you say, you've jumped five spots.
What are the tactics?
What are the approaches that you use?
We are a very authentic brand.
When we were founded 47 years ago, we were founded with a vision to help the world run
better and improve people's lives.
We would do that with our technology and how our technology could work to enable that.
We are authentically true to our promise every day in terms of how we develop products to
help the world.
Be authentic, understand your purpose, that's number one.
The second is, we really work hard to be in touch with our customers.
Truly understand how they feel, what they want, and how we build an operation around
them so that it meets and exceeds their expectations.
Then the third is, when we think of the tone and the style of how we deliver the message
of the SAP brand, at the end of the day we may be a B2B company but we're still selling
to human beings, so we have to have a very balanced approach to marketing where we both
understand data in terms of making decisions on who we target and what channels we use
to appeal to our target audience but, at the same time, we have practice a fair bit of
empathy, a fair bit of understanding.
In doing that, how we message the brand and the value of brand back to our customers,
being relevant, using a human tone, a fair dose of humor really goes a long way in drawing
a connection that's necessary no matter what business or where in the world you operate.
That's a formula that we've outlined a couple of years ago and we've been working to consistently
drive as it relates to how we build the brand of SAP.
You mentioned terms like authenticity and empathy.
How do you translate that into a brand?
Let me ask it this way.
How do you translate that into something that customers respond to and intuitively feel?
Brands today have an obligation to think beyond the day-to-day and how they work to do good
in the world.
Nearly 90% of all consumers, when they have a choice between two brands of one that does
good in the world and stands for something versus one who doesn't, nearly 90% of all
consumers will choose the brand that's focused on doing good.
It matters.
It matters how we understand and appeal to what consumers' needs are.
It's important with every marketing strategy that we develop, so authenticity is, be true
to your voice and what you believe in, but then have the right level of empathy.
When you message your value, don't just focus on things that may seem generic from one company
to the next, things such as savings, service, and control, which are often corporate goals
that most job titles are looking to support.
Really get down there in the trenches and understand what your customers are trying
to solve.
How do you really look at your products and effectively position that product against
what you think it can help solve for the customer.
Message your marketing in that way as well in terms of output and value, less about things
that are becoming a thing of the past in terms of just pure product, types of positioning
but more positioning in terms of the value that your products were to enable.
Is the foundation then really understanding the customer?
Oh, for sure.
One of the things that I'll be quick to point out, there probably isn't a single company
in the world that will not tell you that we're not customer first.
Every CEO will say, "We are a customer-first organization," but do all of them really deliver
for the customer the way the customer wants?
In fact, there's research out there.
Gartner produced some research not too long ago that says that we have an incredible experience
gap that we have in a sense where 80% of CEOs believe that they're delivering an exceptional
customer experience, yet the customers who are recipients of that service, only 8% of
them agree that their service that they're receiving is exceptional.
That's a tremendous gap that we have and we have to solve for that.
If we don't solve for that and we don't get better in touch with our customers, it's really
unfair for any company to say that they're customer first because then things like trust
deficits get created, which is what we live in right now.
Getting better in touch and really, as you said, understanding truly what it means to
be customer first and then building a business model, a product portfolio, and a servicing
capability that can really help solve the problems your customers are after, that's
what we have to be focused on as brands.
Okay, so the goal then is clear; to understand the customer, to act in a way that engenders
that trust.
Yes.
How do you then translate that into the marketing activities that result in customer perception
and the kind of brand value that we're talking about?
Great question.
When I started as the CMO of SAP a little less than two years ago, one of the things
that I realized, we are a 47-year-old brand but we don't have a brand narrative as a company.
We have a lot of messages.
We have a lot of priorities and corporate strategies, but do we have something that
actually anchors all of that to allow us to stay true to our vision?
We penned a corporate narrative for the business, our beliefs, how we build a culture, our views
on things that matter to people such as gender diversity and inclusion, and creating technology
to help solve problems across the economy, environment, and society.
It really served as that anchor for us and became not only a rallying story for our culture
so that everybody could really deliver based on the same set of core values, but it also
became how we truly want to develop technology that allows us to make our vision a reality.
When we introduced our first campaign into the market last year, we made a conscious
decision that we were going to tell our story through the impact that we were delivering
to our customers.
We showcased customers from all over the world in terms of what they are in the business
of doing and how SAP is working with them to help enable that through our technology.
We spun the message on its head a bit.
Instead of leading with, pick the SAP products and telling a product-based story and then
backing into, afterward, the outcome that that product creates, we flipped it on its
head and instead talked about the actual outcome first because the outcomes are usually what's
the most relatable to a large scale of people.
Then after you get them on the hook and saying, "Yeah, that's awesome and I can relate to
that," the natural question after that is, "Well, how did you do it?
How are you able to achieve that?"
Then that's when we would start to talk about how SAP and what within our portfolio helps
to enable it.
We've been trying and testing several different methods, but I can tell you; staying authentically
true to our purpose and using that as an anchor for everything we do and then looking at how
we spin around the way we tell the story to be focused more on outcomes first and then
products is what enables that after you've built a connection and a relevancy with the
person that you're speaking with.
It's just been a fundamental shift in our marketing and I have to say it feels like
it's working.
Well, the validation seems to be coming from studies such as the one that just came out.
What are some of the obstacles to building a brand this way?
The culture of the company.
Every culture is unique, everyone, and you have to be respectful of that because I think
cultures are really the heart and soul of an organization.
When I talk about being authentic, your authenticity really needs to stem from that heart and soul
of your organization and not be something that you want to change but, rather, what
is the outcome of that culture.
In any great period of transformation, there are things that need to change, but you're
not changing the culture; you're changing sometimes the way in which you operate within
that culture, the process that you develop, the tools that you use to help support your
success.
You have to make it very clear that this is not an attempt to change the culture.
It's about, how do we make the culture more relevant?
How we marketed 20 years ago is very, very different from how we would want to market
today.
You want to change and institute new processes so that you can help the culture be even more
relevant to enable all of us to be more successful.
Then it works, but it's a very, very delicate management of that and, frankly, I think it
takes the right leadership and the right people to be able to manage that successfully.
Respecting the culture that exists and then trying to shape it.
Would that be the right word?
Absolutely.
Shape the process around making that culture really work for you.
It's like technology.
Technology alone doesn't solve problems for companies.
Technology is as good as the people that are managing it and the process that you institute
to help that technology fit and solve the problems that you want it to within your company.
It's so much what you give and your perspective.
As I said, the process and the way of operating that you wrap around that, that really makes
it successful.
If you can build an operating process around a really healthy culture like we've always
had at SAP and evolve that as marketplace conditions evolve, as customer needs evolve,
then that's the best way, in my opinion, to protect the culture but make it relevant year
after year.
Final advice to folks that are listening, that are saying, "Yeah, I want to build a
brand for my company," what should I do?
Take charge of the value that you want marketing to play within a company because it has a
place and I believe that it always will.
It will evolve like any great function or great company on Earth needs to.
But you as the marketing leader are the ones who are best positioned to help your company
understand how marketing can work best for it.
It's exciting to be able to shape a brand that speaks to the needs and the opportunities
that your customers have.
I think that that's a pretty good reward if you think about how you can shape that, how
you can be at the forefront of it, and how you can help your company ultimately achieve
the values so that the brand can work in support of the financial goals of the business.
Alicia Tillman, thank you so much.
Thank you, Michael.
It's been awesome.
[Laughter]