Published June 16, 2014 by Nexalogy

C2MTL is a conference of ideas, but which ones stood out? Using a lexical map, we were able see the key concepts taking hold, and their relationship with each other. Not surprisingly, some of the top social media memes at C2MTL were the result of things said on stage. Here are three speaker quotes that stood out.

1. Mad Men to Math Men

SAP CMO Jonathan Becher hit home with this statement:

We saw it emerge as its own cluster on the lexical map, and it stayed strong throughout the event. This is illustrated by the connections between words, and the size of each node:

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Published June 4, 2014 by the Economist

AT A Montreal business conference last week called C2MTL, participants were encouraged to put on a blindfold, slip into a dry pool filled with plastic balls, and, over loudish dance music, seek solutions with strangers to challenges ranging from cutting youth unemployment to making business ventures involving sex more respectable. Abigail Posner, Google’s head of strategy and a C2MTL speaker, says that her experience in the brainstorming pool was “funky” enough to lift her and others’ inhibitions and the ideas produced were better for it. Put on by advertising agency Sid Lee and Cirque du Soleil, both based in Montreal, C2MTL bills itself as a business conference “somewhere between genius and insanity”.

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Published May 29, 2014 by The Huffington Post

During day one at C2MTL in Montreal, “a business conference somewhere between genius and insanity,” several multi-milionaires delivered TED-Talk style inspirational speeches to the aspiring moguls in the audience. A few misguided lecturers bored the audience with platitudes, preaching the value of adaptability (change is a constant), innovation (think different) and passion (love what you do and you’ll never . . . snore). And then there were the winners who delivered fresh, inspiring ideas that anyone in business can take to heart, including:

Connection. Jonathan Becher, CMO at SAP, believes in the marketing power of social media, but not in racking up the numbers. Any connection, even online, should be based on shared passions and the honest desire to exchange thoughts and ideas. If you’re using Twitter to push your products and boost your ego, you’re not doing it right. The take-away: Depth of connections outweighs breadth.

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Published May 29, 2014 by EngagementLabs

The C2MTL conference is taking place this week in Montreal, Canada. The event was conceptualized by Jean-François Bouchard, President of the Montreal advertising and marketing agency, Sid Lee.  Its objective is to celebrate creativity and innovation in commerce in a manner that is “somewhere between genius and insanity”. The end result: a conference that can best be described as a cross between Woodstock and Ted.  Since its inception three years ago, it has become one of the city’s biggest annual attractions. Executives and entrepreneurs from around the world travel to see famous speakers, such as this year’s keynote, Hollywood director James Cameron, or Nobel Prize winning economist, Muhammad Yunus. The event also includes hands-on interactive exhibits, workshops, bike tours, concerts, and more – definitely not your typical business conference.

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Using our evalue analytics platform , we’ve been able to rank the above speakers based on their respective unique evalue scores. We chose to analyze Twitter because it has long been recognized as the dominant platform that influencers engage on.

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Published May 27, 2014 by blogtalkradio

Join Beverly and Jonathan Becher, the CMO of SAP, in a LIVE conversation from C2MTL — an epic event that blends commerce, creativity and mayhem!

This won’t be an ordinary conversation … because C2MTL is no ordinary event, and Jonathan is no ordinary CMO.

With a keen interest in understanding what makes people tick, Jonathan studies human behavior and brings that knowledge into his role as the leader of SAP’s marketing efforts. More than just bits and bytes, he’ll share insights into how tuning into everyday habits and quirks can lead to better campaigns, better employee and customer relationships, and better experiences overall for business owners of all sizes.

Click here to listen to the interview

Published May 15, 2014 by ASUG News

It’s a time of transition at SAP—with the recent turnover in the executive ranks and the cloud taking center stage—and that will be on display at Sapphire Now in Orlando, which is co-located with ASUG’s Annual Conference.

The event formally kicks off on June 3 (with the ASUG Pre-Conference Sessions starting the day before), and in an interview with ASUGNews, SAP CMO Jonathan Becher gives his preview of SAP’s largest North American conference.

The Theme

SAP has pushed the “SAP Cloud Powered by SAP HANA” branding recently, and Becher says that will be reinforced “everywhere you go” at Sapphire Now. He says attendees should expect some “directional announcements” that will shed more light on the where and when of SAP’s goal to move every application to the cloud.

Bill McDermott’s opening keynote on Tuesday morning, which is likely to be his first big public speech as sole CEO, will incorporate SAP cloud acquisitions Ariba and Fieldglass in talking about “the networked economy”: How business networks are coming together via machine-to-machine technologies, the Internet of Things and social networks, as well as the impact on how businesses will operate in the immediate future, Becher says.

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Published May 11, 2014 by TNS

Good performance alone cannot crack the complex customer code that governs the strength of your customer relationships and the sustainability of your business.

In today’s highly competitive environment, it is essential to understand which customer experiences really matter, and deliver return on the bottom line.

Download the full report below, with insights into how to out-perform the competition to make a genuine asset of your customer relationships.

“Today’s customers are bypassing existing business models in favor of their unique experience and requirements, especially with instant access to peer reviews, competitor offerings, and pricing. Passivity in customer engagement is dead. If you are not actively engaging your customers by understanding their needs and providing the tools they need when they need them, you are losing,” Jonathan Becher, Chief Marketing Officer, SAP.

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Published May 9, 2014 by AdExchanger

Jonathan Becher has a lot on his mind this week.

As CMO of global German enterprise software company SAP, which employs 67,000, he spearheads the messaging for a multi-billion dollar public business. And on Sunday, that business announced the departure of Vishal Sikka, one of its product pioneers who tirelessly evangelized SAP’s high-speed-everything engine HANA.

Furthermore, SAP has not had an easy ride in the image department. Some industry insiders say its media and marketing capabilities are playing “catch up” to competitors like Adobe and Oracle, which are acquiring and building digital marketing clouds at breakneck speed.

Becher fully acknowledges SAP’s perception of being rooted in the supply chain-centric world of enterprise resource planning (ERP) and big finance. But it’s an image Becher, who came to SAP seven years ago by way of acquisition (Pilot Software), is looking to change.

Becher spoke with AdExchanger.

AdExchanger: What’s SAP doing in digital marketing these days?

JONATHAN BECHER: Because we’re a technology company, we can experiment with a lot of technology SAP [already] has to solve marketing problems, and not just digital marketing problems.

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Published May 7, 2014 by the Harvard Business Review

One of the central concepts of marketing and sales is the funnel — through which companies are supposed to systematically move prospects from awareness through consideration to purchase.

But consumers are now more informed, connected, and empowered than ever. Does the funnel still work in a digital, social, mobile age?

We asked some of the leading marketers in the world — from companies like Google, Intuit, Sephora, SAP, Twitter, and Visa — to assess the relevance of the marketing funnel.  What we found says as much about the future of business as it does about the future of marketing.

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One popular alternative to the funnel is the Customer Decision Journey popularized by McKinsey. A key advantage of this model is that it’s circular, rather than linear. Prospects don’t come in the top and out the bottom, but move through an ongoing set of touchpoints before, during, and after a purchase.

The Customer Decision Journey is an improvement over the traditional funnel, but some marketers see it as incomplete. The problem is in the name itself. Brands may put the decision at the center of the journey, but customers don’t. Jonathan Becher, CMO at SAP, believes that for customers, “the pivot is the experience, not the purchase.” The Customer Decision Journey might be circular, but if the focus is still on the transaction, it is just a funnel eating its own tail.

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Published May 5, 2014 by Influence Marketing

Once the domain of B2C companies, influence marketing is quickly being adopted by B2B firms.  SAP’s Chief Marketing Officer, Jonathan Becher, reiterates the importance of digital influence as “a significant mechanism to identify and engage potential customers for his business.”

Specifically, SAP is looking at the potential to shorten the B2B sales cycle using  influence marketing strategies because individuals exchanging experiences across social media has essentially redistributed “purchasing influence.”  It’s less about amplification of brand messages and more about identifying decision-makers in the purchase cycle in order to prep them for the sales call.

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