How Marc Benioff ‘Waged War’ and ‘Partied with a Purpose” With Bold Storytelling Tactics That Helped Salesforce Become One of the Largest SaaS Companies of All Time

It’s the 31st of December 1999 and we’re about to flip over to the year 2000.

And on that night, Marc Benioff — the Founder and CEO of Salesforce.com — was about to introduce his company to the world by throwing one of the greatest parties ever at the exclusive San Francisco Regency Theater.

The main entertainment that night was the B-52s, the “greatest party band”.

Legendary Storytelling…

Benioff had created a brilliant brand story for Salesforce.com (SFDC).

His story was going to see SFDC wage war against the traditional and ineffective ways software was delivered to customers. Back then, software was delivered via CDs (compact disks for the younger generation) which had to be installed directly onto your computer!

Marc wanted to offer a new and better way to serve customers through the introduction of an entirely new market — SaaS Cloud Computing — pretty much the norm today.

How to create a killer event to tell your brand story

So how did Marc Benioff “Party with Purpose” that night and create an event his audience would remember forever?

The Lower Basement a.k.a. “HELL”

The Regency Theater had three floors. And in the lowest floor, Marc transformed it into a space that represented enterprise software — aka hell.

There were cages with actors playing captured old-school enterprise salespeople locked inside screaming “Help, get me out”. Another was holding a contract that said “Sign this million-dollar licence agreement, I need to make my quota”

There were ‘Whack-a-Mole’ machines where the moles were other software company logos

The Middle Floor a.k.a. “LIMBO LAND”

After this inferno of hell, the guests progressed upstairs to the middle floor where they encountered limbo-land.

The Top Floor a.k.a. HEAVEN”

Finally, when they were ready, they were able to go up one more level to the top floor where they experienced Nirvana. There were harps playing. It had a nice, light theme. The drinks were flowing.

The top floor represented heaven. This was SFDC.

Embrace bold marketing tactics to break through all the industry noise

1500 attendees were there that night and it earned SFDC a ton of invaluable press. Most importantly, the audience and press remembered the story of change Benioff was trying to tell.

For me, Marc Benioff is a marketing and PR genius.

And this event helped to kickstart the “No More Software” campaign — one of the greatest marketing campaigns of all time — which I will dig into another day.

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