Martijn Delahaye – AFAS

Martijn Delahaye is Director Marketing & Communication at AFAS Software, a Dutch family-owned company that develops software products for businesses and consumers. During the corona crisis, the company communicated a lot to clients, but not so much above the line, Martijn: “We have been through a tough marketing year, no events, concerts or sports. Instead, we focused on our culture. We recently won an award for the best employer in large companies, which is proof that your brand which is based on culture, has indeed grown. We base everything on the culture, from the product to processes, vision to the market, to how we communicate. We work from the inside out.”

growing the brand

When it comes to growing the brand, Martijn shares how the company has decided to grow between 12% and 15% per year, not more, not less: “If you grow 0% one year and 30% the next, your quality takes a hit. We are a family business so there are no stakeholders or loans. AFAS does not need to grow to pay off loans, finance is a consequence; the growth lies in the fact that we want to have fun together and come up with great solutions for our clients so that they can enjoy their work more, which is embedded into our mission. Our mission is a translation from our identity and the core values of the compass in which we educate our employees: ‘gek doen, vertrouwen, familie’ (doing something crazy, trust and family). These are not marketing terms that we made up, but come from employee surveys, these four words kept popping up time and time again, so we have embedded them into the business. As a client, you may see some of our craziness, but above all, you may see trust and being part of the family. This is how we keep on building and changing our identity.”

drivers for growth

Using sponsoring as a driver for growth is something AFAS has done for many years, Martijn: “In 2010, AZ football club was struggling due to bankruptcy. So, we thought it was a good time to step in and take part in the growth of a club that was starting to get back on its feet. This is our twelfth year sponsoring the club, and AZ has been the turning point for us. It’s amazing how something as sponsoring a football club opens doors to companies that now suddenly take you seriously. AFAS was a small company from Leusden, and before 2010 we were active in the SME sector, but after that we were suddenly talking to much larger companies. You notice that the brand suddenly got that ‘wow factor’; if you can sponsor AZ, you must have a certain volume. Something I always recommend to companies that are new to sponsoring is to check whether your company is ready to meet bigger clients. You won’t suddenly get 1,000 more clients, but they will become bigger because your logo is now present at A level and the association will change. That’s what I like about brand building; what do you want to associate with and how does that reflect on your brand? In 2018, we welcomed Obama in AFAS live, and people started talking about us as a renowned brand. It’s great when you can connect one of the most inspiring leaders to your brand for a while.”

When the Heineken Music Hall became AFAS live in 2017, the company received many comments about the name, Martijn explains: “We thought sponsoring the venue in Amsterdam was a great opportunity to expand our employment proposition to the younger generations. Our experience with the AFAS Circustheater was that people were still calling it the Circustheater. So, with the Music Hall, we wanted to include AFAS, followed by a word that doesn’t mean anything. We wanted people to say ‘I’m going to AFAS tonight’, people are not going to say ‘I’m going to the Live’. We had comments that ‘Live’ doesn’t mean anything, but after a few months we saw that people were already using the AFAS name. Once that happened we had to activate again to explain what AFAS is.”

biggest challenge

Due to their sponsorships, AFAS’ brand awareness has increased significantly over the years. However, Martijn shares how awareness isn’t everything: “I think the brand only has value if people know what you do, and that has been our biggest challenge. Our brand awareness in B2B is quite high, but if you ask people what AFAS does, there is a big gap. That’s also where our TV campaign originated. It’s corona, so we can’t activate what we have, no AFAS live, we can’t go to AZ with clients. As fewer companies were advertising due to the lockdown, prices shot down, so TV became more interesting. We made a relatively flat commercial because our goal was not to generate more brand awareness, we had to share that we are a software supplier. Despite the informative commercial, it ensured our best conversion month to date. Our annual brand awareness image study starts again soon, and I have hope that our scores have increased compared to other years.”

“Data is important, but not everything important for your brand lies in data. Sometimes you must act on gutfeel, culture, and have the belief to work towards something.”

inspired by data, not led

As a software company, Martijn shares how data is super important, but as a company, they put feelings first, facts second: “We are definitely data-inspired, but I don’t like the word data-driven, as it allows you to become a slave to the data. We brainstorm first, make decisions and look at our objectives, and then we dive into the figures.” In presentations and workshops, Martijn often gives the example of noticeable versus measurable: “You’re a marketer and you have a budget, so how much do you invest in things you can measure, and how much do you invest in the brand? Often, you see that especially young people get into a vicious circle; they have just finished education and are used to doing everything with data. The CFO then says: ‘this is the budget for the campaign, how much will it yield?’ Which results in you only doing measurable things. The noticeable things, such as sponsorships and events that have a great impact and cost money, but for which you cannot say exactly how successful they were, will not be done. Data is important, but not everything that is important for your brand lies in data. Sometimes you have to do things on gutfeel, your culture and identity, and have the belief to work towards something.”

Martijn thinks you should always look outwards, be in contact with people and talk to them: “I have one rule within marketing, the 20% rule; you spend one day a week connecting, innovating, looking ahead. I am terrified that soon we will lock ourselves up in dashboards and Excel sheets and say this is the world, this is reality. Data is important but just as important as your gut feeling or common sense. I have a marketing budget on which I have KPIs, but if we say we have a fun campaign that will make people happy, nobody will say ‘why does it have to cost so much money’. That is the luxury of being part of a family business and having the entrepreneurship and confidence to be responsible for your own budget, without having to go through the board for every campaign.”

all about balance

In 2018, AFAS turned off all their paid online advertisements which resulted in some pages dropping, but organic findability stayed more or less the same, which turned out to be a real eye-opener, Martijn: “We have built a name for ourselves and people know how to find us. We have been growing for years with marketing and paying less for paid advertising, and that has become a second KPI. We supplement our organic search with paid advertising, but since the experiment, always with the idea of how we can reduce it in the future. The brand we build with offline sponsorships positively impacts our online presence, but we would never be at this point if we focused on the measurable and not the noticeable. Culture, brand, sponsorship, events and online all come together for us. You can hyper-focus on optimising one domain, and sure, the numbers may grow a little, but you also need to see the whole picture and look out for those big opportunities. Online and data are very important, but in balance.”