We love your products, but... A tough time with our client's clients. Fictional characters are used to advance issues that our client's clients won't discuss.

Click to play video: 2002 Global Client Forum Video Requires a JavaScript enabled browser.

This video presented a unique creative challenge. SSA Global Technologies first approached us in mid-2001 to help create a video for their first Global Client Forum. For a similar meeting in 2002, they initially hoped to send us across the country to get testimonials from key customers. Then they hit a snag.

SSA's product line contains dozens of huge, complex, integrated systems. Their customer list reads like a page from the Fortune 500 list. They are one of the few technology firms based in Chicago that has thrived during the tech downturn. However, this was not always the case.

Prior to an investor-led reorganization in the late 1990's, SSA-GT had all but stopped operations. During this difficult time, their customers remained remarkably loyal, in part because their products are quite solid, but in part because it's tough to change vendors for systems that run entire manufacturing plants. Prior to the company's rebirth, customers had very little support, and had not seen a new version in years. With the relauch of SSA-GT in 1999, these customers were cautiously optimistic about the future, but understandably, many had adopted a wait and see policy. None of the key customers felt comfortable going on record with a ringing endorsement, at least until a bit more time had passed.

But all was not lost. Knowing the issues SSA hoped to advance at the meeting, we wrote a script and shot fictional characters talking about the challenges of working in today's business climate. Martin directed these "testimonials" as if they were actual interviews, shot on location in a setting appropriate for each character. Many of the performances were ad-libbed, to make them feel more candid. While not as powerful as actual customer comments, the resulting piece does successfully lay out many of the same challenges that actual customers would have addressed, and describes how SSA-GT can address their enterprise customers' problems.

SSA-GT makes systems that run huge enterprises.



The CEO needs enterprise-wide information, and he needs it now.



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