Announcing SMG’s newest client partnership

Maggie Fox, January 16 2008

It’s a deep irony that we were scooped on our own announcement by the online version of a marketing industry publication here in Canada. But, as the saying goes, “The Cobbler’s children have no shoes…”

In any event, reporter Jeromy Lloyd has already done our work for us. Below please find an excerpt from his article on SMG’s newest account win:

SMG named conversation starter for SAP

After bringing Ford home as a client last year, Social Media Group has landed another high-profile global account—business software giant, SAP.

Based in [Walldorf], Germany with operations in 120 countries, SAP reported revenues of US$14.5 billion in 2006.

Having won a competitive review against an unknown number of competitors, Social Media Group will now develop and manage SAP’s global social media strategy in conjunction with its global marketing team in New York.

The way the market has changed, our customers are demanding a much greater degree of intimacy and transparency,” says Steve Mann, social media strategist at SAP Global Marketing., “We recognized this years ago when we launched the SAP Developer Network and Business Process Expert communities, which now have over 1 million members. We want to build on that great work to enjoy an even closer relationship with our customers and drive consideration for our products and services.”

“It’s become a conversational economy where customers want to have conversations with their providers, with their peers and with other people who are using the software solutions they’re evaluating.”

The software giant is a major win for the eight-person [about to be nine - Ed] shop in Dundas, Ont.

“We’re in the process of allocating resources and determining our 2008 staffing requirements to accommodate the social media needs of [SAP],” says Maggie Fox, the agency’s CEO and founder. While she would not provide specific dollar figures, Fox did say the “initial engagement with SAP is more than three times the size of our initial engagement with Ford.”

It is our most extreme pleasure to be working with the fine people at SAP – a firm that we began to get to know early in 2007 after I was invited to attend their Sapphire event in Vienna by Mike Prosceno in SAP Communications. We very much look forward to developing an even deeper relationship with this amazing group of professionals as we work together to create an industry-leading social media strategy in support of their global marketing efforts.

Onward and upward!