The Challenge

Now in the fifth year of partnership with Salesforce, year after year the programme really moves to align with the brand’s strategy. With this year’s primary focus on facilitating quality, high-level engagement with senior marketing leads in the UK, every touch point of the 2019 campaign needed to drill back to this.

The Method

In June 2019 Marketing Week, a Xeim brand, launched ‘The Marketing Week Top 100’ a list of the 100 most effective marketers in the UK. Salesforce was the sponsor for the programme to identify the highest achieving and most impactful marketers, who were then judged by some of the biggest names in the industry.

A series of content initiatives, including research reports, video webinars, podcasts and native content articles, allowed Salesforce sustained access to members of the ‘Marketing Week 100’ throughout the campaign.

Econsultancy was also called upon to create a piece of content which helped provide a platform for engagement with CMOs through the Marketing Week 100 programme. Econsultancy’s analyst expertise, brand credibility and senior audience access created a unique positioning to help deliver this.

Later in the year, at the Festival of Marketing, Salesforce hosted a drinks reception to celebrate the Marketing Week Top 100. Salesforce benefited from a personalised introduction service to a host of VIP attendees and the opportunity to engage with all of those who made the longlist.

It was the tip of the iceberg as far as Salesforce’s integration at the Festival of Marketing was concerned; as the world’s number 1 CRM, Salesforce doesn’t struggle to ensure its platform is ‘out there’ but its involvement with the Festival took its level of authority to a new level among such a focused, marketing-specific audience.

From webinars to content integration, a branded VIP speaker lounger plus data and meet and greets with over 250 speakers, Salesforce also took part on a panel session on the main stage, hosted by Marketing Week editor Russel Parsons, debating how the role of the CMO is increasingly important in organisations.

Complementing the Festival of Marketing activity, Salesforce also sponsored one of the headline awards at the Marketing Week Masters Awards, crowning Tesco’s Alessandra Bellini as ‘Marketer of the Year’.

Leveraging the Marketing Week Top 100, the Festival of Marketing and the Marketing Week Masters Awards platforms to maximise face to face engagement, Salesforce was able to

lean into more traditional media elements in order to service the secondary objective of building awareness of its proposition as a marketing solutions provider.

The Results

With engagement being Salesforce’s primary objective, its exposure to an extraordinary amount of senior marketing professional in the UK through the programme, including personalised introduction to over 50 of the UK CMO community, Top 100 marketers in the country and 250 Festival of Marketing speakers each offering a unique authority in their field, ensured a hugely positive response and a commitment to the partnership between Xeim and Salesforce for a sixth year, kicking off in early 2020.

In addition, positioning Salesforce as a thought leader in the marketing sphere and the educational elements of the programme through content integration, landed Salesforce’s key messages and allowed them to align with the UKs most influential marketers’ data and building lasting relationships with many.