Day Two of Dreamforce – and it's 'do you believe in fairies?' time – with Marc Benioff cast as an unlikely Peter Pan of software to mock Microsoft.
In a shamelessly gleeful display of marketing oneupmanship, Benioff hit back at Microsoft's placing of ads in major publications featuring an unhappy Salesforce.com 'customer' who had moved to Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online. 'I didn't get forced,' says the ad strapline. The same 'customer' – in reality an actor/model – also adorned a fleet of Segways outside the Dreamforce conference, each also carrying the 'I didn't get forced' message.
Benioff opened his second day keynote with a mock plaintive confession. “We need to have a very personal conversation,” he told his audience. “Not everybody wants us to have this much fun. There are forces out there trying to stop us. When you are trying to create a new industry there is an old industry out there doing everything they can to stop this.
“There's one company that's gone all out to do this especially in the last year,” he went on. “They have had an Evil Empire focus on our industry. They do not want us going into the Cloud. They're trying to stop Chatter. They're trying to stop the Sales Cloud.
“This year Microsoft sued us to try to stop us. We had to hire the guy who had beaten them before to win again. They tried, they lost. We prevailed. Then again they started to show up at our events, protesting us. 'Stop that Cloud! You don't want that Cloud! Don't you love software? Don't forget that software you grew up with!'.”
Producing a copy of The Economist, Benioff turned to the full page 'I didn't get forced' Microsoft advert. “The ad says this guy got forced,” said Benioff in mock despair. “I really don't know what to do about it. We don't have that many unhappy customers, but it happens. You gotta turn those customers around, you gotta bring them back. Suddenly we see this customer getting forced everywhere. We can make this customer a success again, but it will take the collective will power of the Salesforce nation.”
At which point, the Salesforce.com CEO wheeled out 'Bernard' – AKA the very same unhappy forced customer from the Microsoft ad (ahem!) – onto the stage.
Getting 14,000 delegates onto their feet to will 'Bernard' to rethink his decision and come back to the Salesforce.com fold...
...Benioff won him over, celebrating with high fives...
...and a manly hug!
For 'Bernard', it was five minutes in the spotlight; for Benioff, it was a marketing master stroke. The reaction up in Redmond remains to be seen...
