Salesforce hired fake protesters outside Siebel's 2000 conference to drive hype
Marc Benioff · Behind the founder: Marc Benioff · Dec 22, 2024 · at 16:07
Salesforce co-founder Marc Benioff describes the legendary guerrilla marketing stunt used to launch Salesforce against market leader Siebel Systems in San Francisco in February 2000.
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“We hired a bunch of actors, and they were doing this event in San Francisco, and, you know, San Francisco is very woke, so, you know, nobody, you know, people expect a protest, a good protest. So we had, got some picket signs at Home Depot and made some signs, you know, that said the end of software is near, you know, and all kinds of other, no software and all these things. We had a lot of funny things on signs and we ran a, we were running a protest outside of Siebel that they were in the software business, but we were like, oh no. You know, we've got to get out of software. We got to create the end of software. And so we have picketers outside of the streets. Anyway, he comes out himself out of the building and is really gets super upset. And right then we hit a button and we have other actors in a van who come out and they are staging a themselves as news crew. So they are like K NMS, no more K, no more software. And we're like, they're interviewing the protesters. So now he thinks that it's a media thing. He calls the police.”
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