Salesforce launches a global ad campaign to tell people what it does

Although most people have likely heard of Salesforce and its larger-than-life CEO, Marc Benioff, the company says most people aren't sure what it exactly does. “Over the last six months, we’ve done a lot of research to learn more about what the Salesforce brand means to people,” Stephanie Buscemi, CMO at Salesforce, says in a blog post, adding that “people still don’t understand well enough what we exactly do.” The $130-billion company, which Kantar says is the fourth-fastest growing brand in the world, is acknowledging that fact through its first in-house, global ad campaign, with the tagline, “We bring companies and customers together.” The effort debuted today at DMEXCO in Cologne, Germany and will be shown through out-of-home, print, digital, radio and social media. Salesforce says it also intends to create a TV commercial, adding that it's still being developed and won’t be shown until October. The new ad campaign features simplified messages such as “We bring government and citizens together,” or “We bring manufacturers and customers together." The ads include regular people, as well as the company’s cute mascots—a cartoon-like depiction of Einstein and a bear that plays the ukulele. Banking on a simplified message with its new global ad campaign is likely a sound approach for Salesforce, as it has a dizzying number of products, each geared toward solving a specific problem for any given business. Salesforce initially made its mark through customer relationship management, or CRM, but today it’s aggressively expanding into new arenas. It acquired Tableau, a company that specializes in visual analytics, for nearly $16 billion earlier this year, hoping the software would better help marketers make sense of the abundance of data and metrics at their disposal. Buscemi says the rapid expansion of CRM outside of Salesforce has made it challenging for people to understand what the company does. “We make technology that supercharges every part of your company that connects with customers, delivering a 360-degree customer view across sales, marketing, service, e-commerce, mobile apps, connected products and more,” she says. “CRM also powers integration with all the other parts of your business already humming along, including supply chains and finance.” “It’s back office, front office, and offices yet to come,” Buscemi adds. Despite admitting that many people are unsure what Salesforce does, the company has developed a strong following among its core users. Dreamforce, the company’s annual mega conference that overtakes the streets of San Francisco for several days, attracted nearly 180,000 people last year, putting it on par with the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. It’s also developed a free training program called Trailhead, which allows anyone to learn the complexities of using Salesforce software; the effort has proven to be such a hit that rivals such as Google and Adobe have since adopted similar efforts.

Salesforce launches a global ad campaign to tell people what it does

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