Hacker News Reader

Comment by kermatt | Hacker News Reader

It does seem odd that companies would pay for services from Salesforce because of a celebrity quip, instead of a determination that said services would improve the company's operations.

Or perhaps these Marketing departments are just really good at internal marketing of budget usage?

View on HN

That's not what marketing does. It doesn't influence the decision. Marketing makes sure your company is top of mind when the customer decides to make a decision.

Not just that. An effect of advertising I only understood later in life is that they give the company name recognition among all your peers.

E.g. BMW doesn't create car commercials just to get everyone to think about BMW when buying cars. They make car commercials to make sure everyone knows that BMW is expensive and good, so that driving a BMW is a signal that you're wealthy.

Similarly, Salesforce might want to make it clear that if you go with them, it's a "defensible" choice that you can easily explain to your boss.

To be fair though, that's influencing the decision that they make, at least averaged over many people.

So are you saying, then, that you find it odd that marketing and advertising works? Nothing wrong if you do, I just wanted to be clear on that point.

No, I find it odd to spend that much cash on a celebrity endorsement when the target consumer audience (businesses) know that the celebrity is not a Sales Force customer:

"What the heck to Matthew McConaughey use SalesForce for ?"

  or more importantly:

"Why is SalesForce paying that kind of money when they could be investing instead in their abysmal support?" - as a SF/Tableau customer this is my perspective.

how do you know it worked in this specific case though? maybe Salesforce would have done just as well financially and also saved 20 million or something like that without that ad campaign

And maybe it wouldn't have. But since I don't work for SalesForce's marketing dept, there's no way to tell.

We buy face creams and cars and sodas and everything else under the sun because popular celebrities tell us to. You can find it "odd" but it works.

It works for enterprise software? why so few companies do it then?

also even if we focus on the consumer market there are very successful companies which don’t spend any money on traditional marketing and don’t do ads at all.

> It works for enterprise software?

Is not really a new marketing concept

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0AJM6HMYjM

> there are very successful companies

Naming a couple would make your claim more persuasive.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com