How SAP Turned Manhattan Sidewalks Into an Experience Management Lab
SAP's 2019 'Improving a Neighborhood Experience' campaign is a documentary-style social experiment, produced by BBDO New York, in which 1,200 downtown Manhattan residents were surveyed about their neighborhood and their feedback was transformed into three physical community installations, demonstrating the real-world application of SAP Experience Management technology in the United States.
The campaign operates as a live proof of concept for SAP's Experience Management platform, known by its shorthand XM. Rather than staging a conventional product demonstration, BBDO New York embedded the technology's core promise — that capturing and analyzing human feelings leads to better outcomes — directly inside the fabric of an urban community, according to Clickz. Residents of downtown Manhattan were invited to share their feelings about greenery, scenery, and commuting, and those responses informed three distinct installations: a floral display and mini-park built in a parking lot, a selfie backdrop, and a commuter lounge. The activation ran over four weeks, with production handled by ENTER.
The campaign carries the hashtags #XM and #TheBestRun, anchoring it firmly within SAP's broader 2017–2019 brand repositioning around the idea that the best-run businesses are powered by human experience, according to Directnewideas. In the United States, that repositioning had already been accelerated by SAP's acquisition of Qualtrics, which deepened the company's experience management capabilities and gave campaigns like this one a credible technological spine. The activation was later expanded from Manhattan to San Francisco, extending the geographic reach of the experiment across two of the United States' most prominent urban markets. The Clapboard Score for this campaign is 63 out of 100, reflecting its strong conceptual clarity and experiential craft against limited documented performance data.
SAP faced a durable communications challenge in the United States enterprise technology market. The company's software is operationally essential but emotionally remote, a category perception that competitors including Oracle and Salesforce have also struggled to overcome. According to Scribd market analysis, SAP held approximately 7.7 percent of the global enterprise-applications market in 2019, placing it ahead of Oracle at approximately 5.1 percent and Salesforce at approximately 5.0 percent — but market leadership in share does not automatically translate into cultural relevance or brand warmth, according to LinkedIn.
BBDO New York's strategic answer was to make the technology's promise legible to anyone, not only a chief information officer. The documentary and social experiment format was a deliberate choice: by working with real New Yorkers in a recognizable public setting, the campaign translated abstract data-processing capabilities into concrete, visible community benefit, according to Effieinsights. As reported by LBBOnline, the work was designed to demonstrate Experience Management rather than advertise a product in any conventional sense, a distinction that reflects a broader industry shift toward brand credibility built through action rather than assertion.
The strategic context matters. SAP's acquisition of Qualtrics had positioned the company to compete directly in the experience management category, a space where the core value proposition — turning human feedback into operational decisions — is only convincing if audiences can see it working. In the United States, where urban civic infrastructure is a live and contested subject, downtown Manhattan provided a charged and relatable backdrop. Surveying 1,200 New York residents about greenery, scenery, and commuting gave the campaign empirical grounding while the resulting installations gave it narrative resolution, closing the loop between listening and action in a way that a traditional product film cannot replicate.
Production partner ENTER executed the physical and filmed elements of the campaign under the creative direction of BBDO New York. The documentary-style social experiment format demanded a specific production discipline: the footage needed to feel observational and authentic rather than staged, because the entire persuasive weight of the campaign rested on the credibility of real New Yorkers speaking candidly about their neighborhood. Any visible artifice would have undermined the Experience Management argument at its root.
The three installations — a floral display and mini-park constructed in a parking lot, a selfie backdrop, and a commuter lounge — were not decorative afterthoughts. Each responded directly to the feedback categories gathered from the 1,200 surveyed residents: greenery, scenery, and commuting. This one-to-one correspondence between stated need and physical response was the campaign's central creative mechanic, making the XM platform's analytical loop visible and tactile rather than abstract. The installations transformed data outputs into objects that passersby could touch, photograph, and use, which itself generated secondary content through the selfie backdrop and organic social sharing.
The campaign's visual language aligns with the broader documentary tradition in advertising, a genre that gained significant traction in the United States market during the 2010s as brands sought authenticity signals in an era of audience skepticism. According to LBBOnline's coverage, the execution was positioned as an experience management demonstration rather than a commercial, a framing choice that shaped every production decision from casting to edit style. As reported by LBBOnline, trade coverage of the campaign was published as late as January 2023, suggesting the work retained enough creative distinction to merit retrospective editorial attention more than three years after its original release. Production credits beyond ENTER and BBDO New York are not fully documented in public sources.
The broader SAP Experience Management campaign received a Bronze Effie Award in 2020, according to Effie Insights. The awarded campaign credited SAP alongside PHD New York, eg+ New York, Siegel+Gale New York, RAPP New York, and BBDO New York, according to Effie Insights, reflecting the scale of the integrated effort of which the neighborhood activation formed a part. The Effie recognition is the single independently verified performance marker associated with this body of work.
No verified sales lift, revenue increase, market-share change, lead-generation result, or brand-tracking shift is publicly available for the specific 'Improving a Neighborhood Experience' execution. The campaign archive recorded 29,435 views and 27 likes on its platform, with zero comments, figures that represent a modest digital footprint for a campaign of this production scale and strategic ambition.
Structurally, the campaign's effectiveness logic is sound. Closing the loop between community feedback and physical installation creates a narrative arc that product-benefit advertising rarely achieves, and the expansion of the activation from Manhattan to San Francisco indicates that the model was considered replicable by the client. The documentary and social experiment format generated trade press coverage extending into 2023, as reported by LBBOnline, which suggests a longer earned-media tail than most experiential activations sustain. The Bronze Effie, per Effie Insights, confirms that the campaign was judged to have achieved measurable effectiveness within its category, even if the granular metrics behind that judgment remain proprietary.
SAP's 2019 campaign was a documentary-style social experiment set in downtown Manhattan. BBDO New York surveyed 1,200 New York residents about their neighborhood and used their feedback to build three physical installations, demonstrating how SAP Experience Management technology transforms human input into real-world community improvements.
BBDO New York created the campaign for SAP in 2019. Production was handled by partner agency ENTER. The broader SAP Experience Management effort, of which this activation formed a part, also involved PHD New York, eg+ New York, Siegel+Gale New York, and RAPP New York, according to Effie Insights.
The broader SAP Experience Management campaign won a Bronze Effie Award in 2020, according to Effie Insights. The award credited multiple agencies including BBDO New York and SAP. The 'Improving a Neighborhood Experience' activation in downtown Manhattan formed part of that larger awarded campaign effort.
BBDO New York and production partner ENTER created three installations based on resident feedback: a floral display and mini-park in a parking lot, a selfie backdrop, and a commuter lounge. Each installation responded directly to the feedback categories gathered from 1,200 surveyed New Yorkers, covering greenery, scenery, and commuting.
SAP expanded the activation from downtown Manhattan to San Francisco following the initial four-week New York run. The geographic expansion indicated the client considered the experience management demonstration model replicable across major United States urban markets, reinforcing the campaign's broader strategic ambition beyond a single-city social experiment.
SAP's acquisition of Qualtrics deepened its experience management capabilities and provided the technological foundation for campaigns like this one. The 2019 neighborhood activation served as a public proof of concept for XM technology, showing United States audiences how capturing human feedback generates actionable outcomes, directly supporting SAP's repositioning around Experience Management.
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