Two Comms Lessons from OpenAI

_{Sign up to receive Surface Area or follow me on Linkedin or Twitter. Book a meeting here to talk about ghostwriting from my agency, Principals Media}.

The Oscar for best supporting actor in the OpenAI drama goes to Marc Benioff.

It was Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce, who out of the blue offered to hire any OpenAI employee who wanted to bolt because CEO Sam Altman had been fired.

At 3:16 pm EST on Nov. 20 Benioff tweeted:

“Salesforce will match any OpenAl researcher who has tendered their resignation full cash & equity OTE to immediately join our Salesforce Einstein Trusted Al research team under Silvio Savarese. Send me your CV directly to [email protected]. Einstein is the most successful enterprise Al Platform completing 1 Trillion predictive & generative transactions this week! Join our Trusted Al Enterprise Revolution.”

The issue became moot when OpenAI announced Altman would be returning to the company and the board that fired him would be restructured.

It’s doubtful Benioff seriously expected many engineers to jump to Salesforce.

But it would be a mistake to think the post was a waste of time.

It garnered more than 8.2 million views.

It alerted anyone who didn’t know that Salesforce has its own AI research efforts. He claimed it’s the most successful enterprise AI Platform.

And it spawned a sea of media coverage that you cannot buy.

Articles appeared everywhere from Business Insider to Benzinga to Forbes to Fortune to Bloomberg to the Hindustan Times.

We see this kind of “earned” marketing with consumer brands when they jump on news events. Oreo famously posted the tweet “You can still dunk in the dark” after the lights went out during Super Bowl XLVII.

A CEO tweeting is a more personal version of earned media.

That was underscored by Benioff encouraging resumes be sent directly to [email protected].

And how he followed up in the comments after one post told him to “give it up,” saying the staff was “just not going to work for Salesforce. Ever.”

Benioff responded: “Many of these folks worked for us. Our AI history is very strong. They can boomerang.”

There isn’t a lot of humor on LinkedIn.

That’s one reason it can be so effective.

Frank X. Shaw, Microsoft’s Chief Communications Officer, provided a Master Class this week.

It was Wednesday and the five-day soap opera surrounding the OpenAI drama in which Microsoft played a starring role had just been put to bed.

Shaw had just enough time to share a few thoughts before the holiday break.

The thumbnail intro began earnestly: “There’s been a lot going on last few days, with more to do in the next few — so here are three lessons learned.”

In a three-minute video, filmed standing in front of his computer, Shaw starts in a sober tone.

Without mentioning OpenAI, Shaw says the tumultuous week taught him:

–Don’t confuse objectives and tactics.
–Understand the importance of relationships.
–Know things change and get chaotic. Plan for that.

He talks for about a minute and a half, expounding on the themes generally.

He then says his mistake has been thinking turkey is the objective, not the tactic.

At that point you realize he’s talking about Thanksgiving, not OpenAI.

The OBJECTIVE of Thanksgiving is to get together and enjoy companionship. Don’t get distracted by brining or basting or deep frying the bird, he said.

RELATIONSHIPS are important, so think ahead of safe topics to discuss and who is going to do what. For example, if people get stressed, who will walk the dog?

CHAOS is inevitable. Be prepared. Make the gravy in advance, not last minute. “Hot gravy over cold potatoes is great! Hot gravy over dry stuffing is great!”

“Gravy fixes everything!”

The video ends as it begins, in a quiet and reflective tone.

The post garnered 632 views and 61 comments. More than Shaw’s earlier post that aggregated the breaking news announcements from the OpenAI circus.

It was funny and memorable and provided me some unexpected life advice that I plan to cite as a rallying cry often in the future:

“Gravy fixes everything.”