From 2% Recognition to Top 50: ServiceNow's Idris Elba Blueprint

Five years ago, ServiceNow was invisible to most senior executives. It powered the IT departments of Fortune 500 companies but had almost no recognition above that level. Brand awareness sat below 2%.

Today, the company ranks #41 on Kantar's list of the world's most valuable brands. The change didn't come from a product breakthrough. It came from a marketing decision that departed sharply from the enterprise software playbook.

Apple Wasn't the Answer

When CEO Bill McDermott hired Jim Lesser as Chief Brand Officer, the brief was simple: make ServiceNow a brand that C-suite leaders care about. Lesser, a veteran of BBDO San Francisco who had worked on the Barbie campaign, knew where not to look for inspiration.

"Tech marketers will jump to Apple first," Lesser told Mumbrella. "The differences between our business and their business are so fundamental. Every brand builder loves Apple, but as a model for what we could do, we didn't think that was a good analogue for us."

Instead, Lesser looked at insurance. It's a category where companies sell complex products to large groups of decision-makers over long periods of time. That, he realized, was a much closer match to how enterprise software is bought and sold.

Why Idris Elba

The insight from insurance led to a major campaign built around actor and entrepreneur Idris Elba. In two TV spots created by BBDO New York, Elba plays a charismatic CEO character. The campaign is called "Put AI to Work" and it's the biggest brand investment ServiceNow has ever made.

Samsung Brings Moomin to Art Store, Signals Shift in Brand Strategy

Samsung's Moomin partnership signals a shift in brand strategy: emotional connection now drives loyalty more than price. How heritage IP licensing is reshaping brand positioning across Asia.

Mission MediaMission Media

The partnership isn't just a famous face attached to a logo. Before agreeing to represent the brand, Elba integrated ServiceNow products into his own Akuna Group business operations. That's unusual in B2B celebrity partnerships, where endorsements rarely involve the celebrity actually using what they're promoting.

Lesser's reasoning for the choice: "Similar to ServiceNow, Idris is multifaceted, but most people would immediately say he's an actor. Those who know more about him would say he is also a philanthropist, a CEO of several businesses, and a DJ. He's a multifaceted person, and so I think the match was very symbiotic."

The Science Behind the Emotion

The strategy isn't instinct. It's grounded in research from Australia's Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science, which argues that 95% of potential buyers are not in the market at any given time. That means brand-building needs to reach people who aren't yet thinking about buying, or the pipeline runs dry later.

Lesser frames the emotion-first approach in deliberate terms: "People remember things emotionally far more than they remember them rationally. As marketing leaders, the job is to help company leaders understand that it is rational to be emotional, and that what we're doing isn't crazy; it's science."

For APAC markets, ServiceNow has taken this further by sponsoring live sports events including the Australian Open and AFL, reaching senior executives when they're relaxed and not in work mode. The company reports a 69% improvement in conversion rates in Asia Pacific when brand campaigns are combined with demand generation. Revenue growth across the region is running at 30% or more.

What This Means for B2B Marketers

Millennial and Gen Z buyers now drive most B2B purchasing decisions, and they expect the same quality of brand experience from software vendors that they get from consumer companies. With 94% of B2B buyers using AI tools during their purchasing process, vendors who haven't built brand recognition before the search begins may not appear in the results at all.

Rivals and Biscoff Show APAC Brands How to Embed Into Culture, Not Ads

Rivals and Biscoff prove that brands succeed by embedding into authentic cultural moments, not manufacturing attention. APAC marketers must identify which shows, creators, and cultural moments in their markets have genuine pull.

Mission MediaMission Media

ServiceNow's results are measurable. Awareness grew from below 2% to over 20% in five years. A company that C-suite leaders once couldn't name is now among the world's top 50 most valuable brands.

Marketing leaders point to the campaign as evidence that the assumption of purely rational B2B decision-making no longer holds. According to Lesser, emotion builds memory, memory builds consideration, and consideration builds pipeline.