Nearly 900 people in white lab coats milled around the conference room at the Trailblazer DX conference, preparing to don wild, gray-haired wigs. The 885 participants were out to make Salesforce a Guinness World Record holder. The task? The largest gathering of people dressed as Albert Einstein.
Guinness confirmed the record on March 6, but that is just the start of the story. Salesforce’s goal was to draw attention to their unique efforts in AI, a field that is both crowded and contentious. They’re making a bet that Einstein, the platform’s AI assistant, is different and helpful enough to be worthy of the revered scientist’s name.
Einstein: A Highly Coveted Image
Salesforce’s quest for the perfect mascot for its Artificial Intelligence features started over a decade ago. Marketers initially floated generic ideas like Salesforce AI and Compass, but felt they weren’t distinctive enough to stand out.
CEO Marc Benioff suggested the idea of adopting Albert Einstein as their mascot. The marketing team initially was hesitant, feeling it was too close to IBM’s AI tool, Watson. But, Benioff persisted, even purchasing the domain einstein.com and taking the first steps to license the famous physicist’s likeness.
The rights to Einstein’s image are owned by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which Einstein helped establish. He left his intellectual property to the school at the time of his death.
The university is vigilant about protecting Einstein’s reputation and turns down far more requests for Einstein’s likeness than it grants. Pitches to put his face on milk jugs or napkins haven’t made the cut. But, the university was intrigued by the idea of applying his name to Salesforce’s AI.
Salesforce ultimately paid $20 million for the use of Einstein’s name and likeness. A cartoon version of the scientist has been adopted as the mascot for the AI tools.
Taking on Concerns About AI
For every positive headline related to artificial intelligence, there seem to be two about the dangers of the technology.
Marc Benioff stands out from other tech CEOs in that he is vocal about both the risks associated with artificial intelligence and the need to manage it ethically. Benioff is especially leery of the large language models (LLM) that are the underpinning of generative AI tools. There is evidence of stolen proprietary data being used as feedstock for the LLMs. Many of these models are prone to “hallucinations,” where they will spit out inaccuracies when they lack the data to answer a query factually. And, there have been incidents of AIs spitting out hostile answers when placed in customer-facing positions.
Clara Shih, the leader of Salesforce’s AI efforts, has emphasized the care taken to avoid these risks. Their Einstein Trust Layer is a filter used to prevent their AI from absorbing proprietary data and to ensure Salesforce chatbots are always polite, accurate, and helpful to those who use them.
What Salesforce’s Einstein Can Do
Salesforce Einstein is an assistance AI that can take on a lot of tasks to make customers’ lives easier. This tool can automate routine CRM tasks to help your business identify sales opportunities, nurture client relationships, and create a more personalized customer experience.
The Opportunity & Lead Scoring function can show the likelihood of garnering a sale. The Account and Opportunity Insights tool analyzes historic CRM data to identify structural changes within existing accounts to alert you to changes like expansions, mergers, and board changes.
Einstein GPT can automatically handle many sales tasks like personalizing emails and scheduling sales meetings.
How CLOUDSTREET Can Help
Salesforce is a powerful toolset, and its new AI capabilities can make it more effective than ever. But, this sprawling set of capabilities can mean a steep learning curve and a complicated path to adoption.
At CLOUDSTREET, we customize Salesforce to meet your specific needs. We have the knowledge and experience to implement the system in a way that integrates seamlessly with the other utilities you use to unleash your business’s full potential.
We have helped hundreds of companies customize Salesforce to take full advantage of this powerful suite of programs, including Salesforce B2B Commerce Cloud, Salesforce Sales Cloud, and Salesforce Managed Support.
CLOUDSTREET offers two Accelerator packages that get your store online and selling fast. Our services can increase sales from existing buyers with the convenience of their custom portal, and help you nurture relationships with new prospects.
As Salesforce continues to add smart technology, we’ll continue to offer the same support to help you get the most out of these systems for your growing manufacturing business.
