SAP looks beyond ‘brand journalism’ to the next wave

A former executive at Information Week is all for the concept, but he says the company’s strategy is much bigger than that.

When Bob Evans left his job recently as senior vice president of InformationWeek to work for SAP, he heard the usual jibes about crossing over to the dark side.

Such remarks are familiar to anyone who leaves a mainstream media job to claim an office in a corporate shop, and Evans was becoming vice president for strategic communications at SAP.

In one case the teasing came with an ironic twist. The person making the comment was David Meerman Scott, a proponent of corporate “brand journalism,” and he wholly approved of the approach Evans planned to take in his new position.

SAP is an information giant with 53,000 employees and revenue of more than $16 billion, and it claims to be the largest business-applications company in the world. It makes software for major enterprise applications, mobility, analytics and cloud technology.

Perhaps more to the point, from Evans’s point of view, SAP has a vast customer base worldwide. Thus it seemed the perfect perch for a media guy with an interest in telling stories about innovative approaches to business.

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