Marc Benioff in Lockdown
Salesforce has become a cloud software giant in part through aggressive marketing, but the pandemic has robbed it of Dreamforce, its signature event. What will its showman CEO do without a stage?
Every fall, more than 150,000 people flood a convention center in San Francisco for Dreamforce, the annual conference put on by the city’s largest technology company, Salesforce. Although nominally about the online marketing tools and other cloud services Salesforce specializes in, the event has turned into a cultural jamboree featuring speakers who aren’t usually noted for their expertise in enterprise software, like former President Barack Obama, Pearl Jam singer Eddie Vedder and soccer star Megan Rapinoe.
But earlier this year, after the coronavirus pandemic wiped out business events, Salesforce said it was “reimagining” 2020’s event as a virtual conference. And now Marc Benioff—CEO of Salesforce and maestro of the event—told The Information in an interview last week that a digital Dreamforce might not happen either this year.
