Salesforce was paying Matthew McConaughey $10M/Y to act as a 'Creative Adviser' | Hacker News Reader

Salesforce was paying Matthew McConaughey $10M/Y to act as a 'Creative Adviser'

businessinsider.com

41 pointsredbell14 comments

I attended a Salesforce conference 10 or 15 years ago or so, and Metallica was performing at the actual conference. Marc Benioff mentioned in the keynote that he lived down the street from Kirk Hammett and that's how he got Metallica to perform at the conference - I think the guy just has so much money he can spend it on rubbing elbows with celebrities he thinks are cool.

I think they also gave a private concert to sf employees at one point

Gimme fuel, gimme fa-yeah, gimme all your computation powah. Burp.

One big client for Salesforce could bring in $10m of revenue. Using a highly paid celebrity to lure in potential customers might make perfect business sense from an ROI perspective.

You are joking right? How can you associate Matthew with Salesforce? I can understand if it was a car, a perfume, clothes, but SaaS and such a shity one at that?

All it takes is one executive to notice him in an ad or for one person to spend more time at a Salesforce booth at a conference to potentially turn into a large sale.

Right. Sure.

Benioff seems like an unlikable villain from the TV show Silicon Valley

Felt like that for some time but sorta started liking him. He got a pretty solid track record and besides the usual ups and downs there was no major scandal, no big oopsies, nothing truly awful in the last 20+ years.

Also besides loud marketing Salesforce has been honest with their CSR goals. With excessive bluewashing being the norm out there, that's gotta be worth something.

All the corporate BS aside I'm feeling like he kinda has an above-average talking-to-delivering ratio compared to the rest of the industry.

Alright, alright, alright.

In all seriousness though, the ROI must have been worth it if they were willing to pay that much.

> the ROI must have been worth it

Or, it was a speculation

If the ROI was measured in terms of "someone got to hang out with Matthew McConaughey a certain number of times annually", I'm sure you're correct.

In all seriousness, businesses can and do blow their money on foolish things just like people.

lol. In times of prosperity sales and marketing will blow any available budget on most excessive "conferences" and "trainings". ROI?! It's a subject in their MBA course.

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