If you’ve been paying attention to the finance and accounting software space over the past several years, the marketing is starting to look a lot less like enterprise sales and a lot more like consumer advertising.
One recent example came from Ramp, a financial operations software company that launched a marketing campaign around Kevin, the accountant from “The Office”, played by Brian Baumgartner. The company parked Baumgartner inside a glass box outside the Flatiron Building in Manhattan as part of a promotional stunt and later featured the character in a national Super Bowl commercial, where some slots cost up to $10 million for a 30 second ad. The company declined to comment on the campaign’s ROI.
Meanwhile, newer entrants such as Campfire, an AI-powered accounting and ERP platform, said it has set up hundreds of billboards in San Francisco and New York City.
Those efforts are hardly isolated. Finance software marketing has become increasingly visible across the professional landscape in which CFOs operate. Coupa, a business spend management software company, sponsors signage inside Yankee Stadium. At industry events, the team from Avalara, a tax compliance automation software provider, is often easy to spot in matching bright orange shirts and matching sneakers.
Conference floors frequently feature oversized booths from vendors such as Bill.com, a financial operations software provider, whose expansive presence has become a familiar fixture at all finance and accounting conferences.
Vendors, including enterprise giant Intuit, have also gotten creative, bringing rapper Harry Mack to perform at the Finance and Accounting Technology Expo in 2025. Other technology providers, including NetSuite and emerging platforms like Rillet, maintain a steady presence with their marketing dollars across conferences, podcasts and CFO communities where finance leaders gather.
Interviews with some of the marketers designing these campaigns and the CFOs on the receiving end suggest that the factors driving purchasing decisions sometimes differ from the assumptions behind the marketing strategies directed at them.
CFOs say they rely heavily on peer recommendations, operational outcomes and internal experts when evaluating technology vendors. In some cases, highly visible marketing campaigns can even prompt a different kind of scrutiny, raising questions about how vendors allocate capital and who those investments ultimately benefit.
CFO networks often determine which vendors get considered
Many finance leaders say the earliest stage of evaluating a new platform happens well before they even take the first product demo. Now, controllers and operational finance teams often identify workflow problems that technology might solve, and CFOs then frequently turn to peers who have already implemented similar systems to understand how those platforms actually perform once deployed inside complex accounting environments.
Francis Mitchell, CFO of Hatch Bank, a banking-as-a-service provider, said those conversations remain the most reliable starting point when evaluating finance technology. In a role where executives receive constant outreach via email and social media direct messages from salespeople promising automation or efficiency gains, recommendations from trusted peers carry far more weight than marketing messages.
Mitchell said that reliance on professional networks reflects the practical constraints of the CFO role, where executives must balance evaluating new tools with overseeing financial performance and strategic planning. “At the end of the day, it’s very basic,” he said. “It’s just talking to people that you trust and like.”
Mitchell said outreach through LinkedIn, a tactic he says many salespeople are using these days, does not work on him. “LinkedIn is just a way for lots of people to reach out to me and try to sell me things,” Mitchell said. “I don’t really want to look at anything unless I’m talking to another CFO who has been successful in their career and kind of knows what they’re doing.”
Those discussions often focus on practical operational realities and the rigor of the implementation process, Mitchell explained. “You have limited bandwidth as any executive,” he said. “When you have that time to kind of look into a product, I’m going to call somebody I’ve got in my Rolodex and say, ‘Hey, you’re a really good expert. Maybe more in the accounting function than I am. What’s worked really well for you?’”
Dr. Tim Naddy, vice president of finance for the Savannah Bananas, a professional baseball team and entertainment brand, said similar conversations occur frequently within professional communities, where finance leaders openly compare experiences with different vendors and share insight into how systems perform after implementation.
“Asking other CFOs about their experiences is the gold standard,” Naddy said. “Our community looks out for each other. If it sounds too good to be true, it is. That’s exactly why CFOs need to talk to each other.”
He said CFO networks and presence on social media are turning into ways in which fintech tools are being evaluated across corporate finance. “If we have a great experience, we rave about it,” Naddy said. “If we have a poor one, we won’t go out and complain about it. But if someone asks, we won’t pull any punches.”
Where marketing messages and operational reality can diverge
While marketing campaigns may help vendors capture attention, some finance leaders say the more meaningful friction often emerges later in the sales process when vendor messaging does not match the operational realities of implementing a finance platform.
During early conversations, vendors may present their software as capable of solving a wide range of accounting or finance challenges, but those expectations can shift once finance teams begin integrating the system into existing workflows. Naddy said that disconnect, in his experience, has become a recurring frustration when evaluating fintech platforms.
“Find a real CFO and make them your champion. Everything else is wasted.”
-Dr. Tim Naddy
Vice president of finance, Savannah Bananas
“The biggest frustration I have with fintech platforms is that their sales approach doesn’t necessarily match their potential clients’ needs,” Naddy said. “It feels kind of like you’re getting sandbagged.”
He said vendors sometimes stretch their capabilities during the sales process to close deals, creating expectations that may not align with how the platform ultimately performs once implemented. “They tend to stretch their capabilities on the front end to get you to sign on the dotted line,” Naddy said. In some cases, he said, implementation teams later reveal that certain requests are not supported by the system.
“Once you’re in, the integration team tells you they either don’t know how to implement your specific need or the platform physically can’t do what you’re asking.”
Experiences like that can shape how finance leaders interpret marketing campaigns that emphasize brand visibility or promotional creativity. Naddy said tactics like billboards, influencers or Super Bowl commercials rarely influence how he evaluates software vendors.
“None at all,” he said when asked about the influence on him from some of these campaigns. “They actually come off as gimmicky. If we see an influencer who is not known for financial prowess extolling the virtues of a platform, we immediately cast it off as nonsense,” Naddy said. “Find a real CFO and make them your champion. Everything else is wasted.”
He also said vendor behavior after the initial contract can influence how finance leaders view marketing spending.
“So I’m to believe that because I’ve been using this platform consistently over the last one, two or three years that all of a sudden this software costs two, three or four times more?” Naddy said. “Just because you jam a whole bunch of apps and features that a sliver of your clients find exciting doesn’t mean you jack up everyone else’s rates.”
Naddy called this tactic “bush league” and shared his frustration when companies raise their rates and become flashy marketers all at once. “You can’t force value add on clients who aren’t asking for it and then demand they pay for it,” he said.
Chris Ortega, CEO of Fresh FP&A, a fractional CFO service for SMBs, said reactions like that often stem from a deeper mismatch between how vendors frame their messaging and how CFOs actually evaluate technology investments.
“No CFO makes a technology decision because they liked a celebrity in a commercial,” Ortega said. “To sell to us, you must lead with three things: deep empathy for their specific pain, a clear solution and measurable value.”
Ortega said many fintech companies approach CFOs by describing product features rather than demonstrating that they understand the underlying business problems finance teams are trying to solve.
“Most companies fail because they pitch the product first,” Ortega said. “We don’t care about your features until we know you understand our business.” He said many vendors also rely on messaging that has become overly common across the industry.
“Stop selling ‘time saved.’ It’s a commodity,” Ortega said. “Every CFO is tired of hearing it. Instead, sell what that time enables, because to stand out, marketing teams have to prove they understand the reality of how finance teams operate.”
Marketers say visibility matters long before buying begins
Marketing leaders behind many of the industry’s most visible campaigns say CFO skepticism often reflects a misunderstanding of what those campaigns are intended to accomplish. Rather than attempting to directly influence a purchasing decision, they say the goal is to ensure their brand is already familiar when a company eventually begins evaluating new systems.
“I would hope no CFO is choosing their ERP based on a billboard.”
Katrina Queirolo
Vice president of marketing, Campfire
Katrina Queirolo, vice president of marketing at Campfire, spoke to CFO.com about the company’s billboard campaign and LinkedIn storytelling, saying the campaigns are designed to build awareness long before a deal cycle begins.
“I would hope no CFO is choosing their ERP based on a billboard,” Queirolo said. “This campaign isn’t designed to convert someone into an active deal cycle,” Queirolo said. “It’s designed to establish a clear, memorable identity in a category historically dominated by legacy players.”
Campfire has placed 265 billboards across San Francisco and New York City as part of that strategy, focusing on locations where finance leaders and technology companies are concentrated.
“My goal is for Campfire to be the first name a finance or accounting leader thinks of when their existing ERP contract is up for renewal,” she said. “Brand awareness gets your foot in the door, but our product does the real selling,” she said.
Campfire has also experimented with unconventional promotional tactics designed to spark conversation among finance professionals online, like the creation of a video game, CEO and CFO John Glasgow’s promotion of a five-day-a-week office policy and grandiose spending on snacks. Queirolo said those initiatives are part of a broader effort to tell the company’s story publicly and build a recognizable identity in a market where many vendors appear interchangeable.
“If we can make someone smile while they’re learning about Campfire, that’s a win,” she said.
Even with brand campaigns, CFOs focus on fundamentals
Finance leaders say that once a vendor reaches the shortlist of products under serious consideration, brand awareness fades quickly and the conversation shifts toward the operational function of the product.
Lauren Dillard, CFO of LiveRamp, a data collaboration and marketing technology company, said marketing campaigns can help vendors appear familiar earlier in the process but rarely determine the final outcome.
“Brand advertising expands the top of the funnel and makes performance marketing more effective,” she said.
Dillard, who also served briefly as interim chief marketing officer at LiveRamp in 2021, said that visibility can help newer vendors gain credibility when competing against established enterprise software providers that have spent decades building brand recognition among finance leaders.
“I’ll occasionally be at a vendor dinner or event and someone orders a very expensive bottle of wine, and in the back of my mind I can’t help but think, ‘I wish that $300 had gone toward product development or lowering the price I’m paying.'”
Lauren Dillard
CFO, LiveRamp
“Brand visibility tends to matter most for new entrants trying to establish credibility and awareness,” Dillard said.
But once a vendor reaches the evaluation stage, CFOs tend to approach the decision analytically, drawing on internal expertise and operational data to determine whether the system will deliver value.
Greg Chisholm, CFO of Lantern, a specialty healthcare network for surgery, cancer and infusions, said finance leaders often rely on subject matter experts within their organizations when evaluating complex platforms, a tactic that, without trust and camaraderie, is hard to build a technology implementation foundation upon.
“There’s a ton of complexity,” Chisholm said. “I’m just not going to get the nuance of how you distribute over channels or the marketing mix model.” Instead, he said vendors can help CFOs by enabling better internal discussions about how new systems might fit within the organization.
“It’s not that a marketer is going to make me more intelligent than my CMO,” Chisholm said. “It’s never going to happen. But what they can help me with is what are the questions I should be asking and how I can become a better partner to those people.”
For many finance leaders, that analytical mindset extends even to how vendors spend their own resources. Dillard said highly visible marketing or entertainment spending can sometimes prompt CFOs to consider whether those dollars could have been invested differently.
“CFOs tend to view spending through a capital allocation lens,” she said. “I’ll occasionally be at a vendor dinner or event and someone orders a very expensive bottle of wine, and in the back of my mind I can’t help but think, ‘I wish that $300 had gone toward product development or lowering the price I’m paying.’”
