Salesforce, Inc. (CRM) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome, partners to this information session on sponsorship for World Tour Sydney 2024. I would like to start this session by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which we meet today, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation and recognize their continuing connection to land, waters and culture. We pay our respects to elders, past and present. I would like to kickstart this session by showing you what World Tour Sydney 2023 looked like from the partner's perspective. We put out a video together. We captured some interviews from our innovative sponsors, what the campground looked like, and we thought there wouldn't be a better way to kickstart this session and showing you that video. So we'll be with you shortly afterwards, enjoy. [Presentation]

All right, partners. I hope you enjoyed that little video. And for the ones that haven't been attending World Tour Sydney before, welcome to this call. It's going to be full of information for you, whether you're considering sponsorship, whether you just applied, whether you just want to know more about the event itself. We've packed it all for you. So thank you for your time in advance. This call will go for half an hour. And just before I hand over to the event lead, Stuart Frank, our Senior Director of Strategic Experiences. I would like just to say a few words on Q&A and how we can engage in the conversation with you. So we have a Q&A box that you should see on your screen. So feel free to ask any questions during the call. We will have time to Q&A towards the end of the half hour. But yes, we'll start and then please feel free to add anything and then we'll take these questions and the ones that we can't due to time, we'll take them offline. So over to you, Stuart. And we'd like to know what we have in store -- what you have in store for us and the partners forward towards Sydney 2024. Over to you.

Thanks, Patricia. Hi, everyone. As mentioned, Stuart Frank is my name. I'm a lead in our Strategic Experiences Events for the Asia Pacific region. This will be World Tour #9 for me. And it is everything we are, as an organization, brought to life in one amazing day in Sydney. So like Dreamforce is everything Salesforce is. This is our version in region. So it is a conglomerate of everything we as Salesforce are, including the ecosystem. Salesforce can't do what we do without our ecosystem of partners, and that is you. So I want to get in today talking about what is World Tour, what it is going to be on the day on the 28th of February next year? And where you can play a part in that. So to give you context, I'm going to run through the 3 kind of pillars that make up World Tour Sydney. The first one is our executive experience. That is an event within an event. So World Tour Sydney is 28th of Feb. That is the larger event is a track within World Tour. And within that space, our innovative sponsors take part in that. The main experience in the middle here is the in-person experience. So World Tour 10,000 people is the number that we are shooting for next year. So we're back to growth. We're back to where we were in 2019, and it is at scale. For those who have not been to world to before, it is quite unlike anything else in the market in terms of scale, in terms of the content, in terms of how we show up, and that is with you. The core components of the day, the main keynote. So I'd like reinforce, the main keynote is the entire story, wrapped up in around an hour, and we want everyone in the room for that. Beyond that, we have over 100 content sessions and that includes the partner theater content, the Innovator Breakout sessions. So there is a lot of content, something for everyone and navigating that is incredibly important for our attendees because it is a lot. We provide tools to guide them through that process. Then we have our Customer 360 campground. So that is all of our products and solutions and industry solutions in demo mode in the Expo area. Around that is the ecosystem. So we are looking at 79 sponsors taking part in the World Tour next year. And that is a big part of the story. A lot of our customers can't do what they do without you. So we want you there. We want you to turn up and participate and be part of World Tour. We have a number of programs that run in parallel. Media and analysts, we do have a program within the event, so we do have media in the house. So running through the logistics, 28th of February on a Wednesday at ICC Sydney. We're looking at 10,000 attendees in total. That includes our customers, partners and beyond. Then we also have our digital experience on Salesforce Plus. So we broadcast the keynote, little amounts of content either side, but really the keynote is our big moment online. How do we get to 10,000 people, 15,000 registered gets us to 10,000 in person. And then likewise, on digital, 2,500 registered 1,500 tuning in live. Those assets do go on to Salesforce Plus on demand for post-event viewing. So these numbers are looking at the live viewers. Then let's get into who turns up. So we will share this content post event. So you don't have to scribble down all these numbers now. But we're looking at 31.5% in the enterprise space, 21% mid-market and beyond. So the splits have been there. Top industries 18.2% is high tech, a bit of a catch-all in that space, depending on how people identify themselves. Then getting into industries, financial services is #1 of [ 6 and 8 ] professional services, comms and media, RCG and beyond. And these are very much across industry audience we are dealing with, and we are creating content and delivering content for them accordingly. In terms of job levels, we have everything from C level through to manager. So the splits also there, direct is 18%, 8% C-level. So we do attract an executive audience through to devs, admins and beyond. Then looking at the job function, lots of numbers in there, 26 in IT, 16 in marketing, 12.5 general management roles, sales and beyond. So a lot of data there that you can dig in to do. It is a predominantly Australia-based event. So if you look at the numbers on the left, 95% are coming from Australia. We have some from New Zealand, 1.5% good contingent actually comes across the ditch. And then there's some internationals in there as well, small contingent from the ASEAN region are targeted for World Tour. Again, on the right, in terms of state distribution, heavy on New South Wales, VIC is second. So we have a good cross-section in our audience. So now I'm delving a little bit deeper into that in-person audience. We do focus on customers and prospects, our Salesforce customers and also prospects. We want new business, we want to engage existing customers as well. So we target all levels, manager, director through that C level as mentioned from ESMB through to enterprise. And I did touch on ASEAN as well. We do actively target select ASEAN accounts to come into region. We represent across those buyer profiles, sales, service, IT, commerce, marketing and data and also key industries. So solutions and content for all of those within the program. It is a lot, as I mentioned, and we do take over most of ICC Sydney, the entire exhibition building as well as some of the convention spaces. So running through for those who were at World Tour this year, we have expanded our footprint. So if you look at Level 1, we were 3 halls down on Level 1 this year. We are expanding to the full 4 hall space. So the full expo down on Level 1. Level 2 is where we move through to that exact programs area I mentioned, which is limited access. It is a small contingent of that 10,000-person audience. Level 3, various meeting rooms. Level 4, registration, our security check-through points. For anyone who hasn't been, we run airport level security for World Tour ensuring the safety of all our customers, our partners, our employees. So that takes place at Level 4 as does at keynote. So keynote room around 4,000 person capacity in the round is attribution in there, and that is the main show. Level 5, some more meeting rooms up there. So it is a significant footprint. Navigating in that space is one of the key areas that we focus on, making sure people have the assets in their hand to get around the venue. But the campground, which is our catchall term for the Expo is where really everything happens -- everything turns up. Our products and industry demos are in there. AI is a common thread for anyone is involved in Dreamforce, AI is turning up everywhere. The partner ecosystem surrounds everything that Salesforce brings to life at World Tour. So as I mentioned, 79 partners we are targeting to have on board with us for World Tour are in that space and not pushed away into a corner. We make sure there is throughput and traffic for all of you, so you get good exposure to the audience there. We will bring to life a customer story. So for those again who have been around in the keynote, you will hear one of our customer stories and everything that they have done with Salesforce and potentially partners. And then we bring that to life in a demo in the campground. R.M. Williams was the demo this year. Our breakout session, so 7 of those happen in the breakout in the campgrounds with the exception of the keynote room, which is our eighth space. We have solution theaters, so getting deep into some of those products like Slack or MuleSoft, for instance, they'll have their own theaters. Trailblazer Forest is where our dev, admin and community come to life. We turn up with our values always with giving back opportunity for our attendees. Slack is in there. There is a small business zone coming back this year for those who have been around a little while. We haven't had an SMB zone in the past, and we are bringing that one back. So that's a long list, but also a shortlist. There's a lot going on in that space. Particularly what's happening in that space is breakout content. So we have 44 main breakout sessions across the Customer 360 and industry portfolio. Then AI will feature heavily across our agenda, of course, we bring our values to life. And then within the Trailblazer Forest, we have the how-to content with theater sessions within there, engaging that dev and admin audience who really make a lot happen when it comes to Salesforce usage. And then in terms of our partner content opportunities, we have 4 breakouts in the main breakout track and then also 25 partner theater sessions happening in 4 partner theaters this year, so up from 2. Moving through to the digital experience. Our Salesforce Plus is our streaming platform for digital content. As I said, we will go live on Salesforce Plus prior to keynote with a bit of a lead in to the main keynote, then broadcast the entire main keynote live and then make that available on demand. This allows us to reach audiences from Perth to Auckland, up to ASEAN as well for those who cannot be in the room. The in-room experience is the optimal experience for World Tour. So we always want to encourage attendees to turn up in person, the engagement and the opportunity for partners there is critical. But we have that opportunity for those who cannot be with us through Salesforce Plus. Now at that point, I'm going to hand back to Patricia to talk through more on the sponsorship packages and the benefits that we get in getting involved in World Tour. So I'll come back to Q&A a little bit later. Thank you.

Thank you Stu. I would like to show you a couple of slides now and take you through the benefits in our sponsorship offer. So you may have seen our sponsorship prospectus already. If you have not, it's listed in the resources on your screen. So you can have a look in more detail after the session. But I'll take you through the main benefits and the main differentiators between our platinum level, which is the mid level. We have innovator level sponsorship by invitation only. Platinum is the next level down at AUD 55,000 and then gold is our lower tier at [ AUD 27,500 ]. So when we are talking about preevent marketing, all of our sponsors are being featured in all of the [ comms ] promoting the event in the lead up of the event. When it comes to on-site marketing and activation, so there's a number of tickets that are allocated per partner per sponsorship tier. So 10 for platinum, 5 for gold, a number of reserves sitting in the keynote room as well. So also platinum get 2 and gold get 1 seat in the keynote room. So it's a reserved seat to make sure that you have premium placement in the keynote room. When it comes to the keynote room as well, platinum sponsors get to have their brand on the big screen as we welcome the guests to the keynotes. When we are talking about theater session, so you may have heard Stuart saying that we have a number of partner breakout sessions or a partner theater. So this is where our platinum sponsors get a chance to be on stage, deliver content. We encourage them to bring customers to speak at this session. So platinum sponsors get a 20-minute breakout session that they own from start to finish. So we're here to guide you through the process. Obviously, your Salesforce contact and your partner account team is also here to guide you through that process, but you earn that session from start to finish and you deliver it to the guests on-site. So with the session comes branding as well, and that gets built into the agenda of the event itself. So you'll get promotions throughout the journey when your session is designed and ready to go for the event. So that's a number of benefits that I wanted to take you through. Moving on, I would like to show you the main differentiator when it comes to the campground and new footprint at the event. So as a platinum sponsor, you get a bigger footprint. It's 3 meters x almost 2.5 meters, significant footprint. Gold also gets a booth inclusion in the sponsorship, but it comes at a smaller size, 2 meters x 1. When it comes to the stand inclusion itself, there are some differences that are dependent on the space we have. So everything is listed there, but mainly it's the size and the ability for you to do demos on site and have more conversations with new leads with the guests with a new footprint. In terms of data to finish, I would like to bring to your attention that the main differentiator between a platinum sponsor and a gold sponsor is that as a platinum sponsor at the AUD 55,000 price point, you will get a list of the attendees post event. So it's significant data that is highly valued that you will get post event. And also with a breakout session within the partner theater footprint, a platinum sponsor also gathers leads when guests arrive at the theater, they sit down, they take part of new conversation. We also capture that, and then we also deliver that data back to you after the event. But for all sponsors, platinum or gold [indiscernible] that will be scanned. So the scanners will be given to you when you bump in during the -- before the event starts, you will be able to scan the data that it reads throughout the day, and this data obviously is exported and with you. So that's across 4 levels. So hopefully, this was insightful for you, the content that was delivered by Stuart Frank on the event itself and the sponsorship benefits. If you have any questions, obviously, we're here to help the APAC sponsorship at salesforce.com is our first point of contact. We also have a marketing agency, [ EE ] who manages our sponsorship on behalf of Salesforce. So I'll take you through some next steps perhaps to open the Q&A and this is the time now where you're welcome to ask anything in the Q&A box, and then we'll come to you when we can. So I know there's already a few that have been posted. Thank you very much for those who have. I may just kickstart by taking you through some next steps. So where do we take this now? So you've all heard this great content. Hopefully, that got you excited about the opportunity and what -- how we can work together towards Sydney 2024. So from there on, you have the sponsorship prospectus. There's a link also for the expression of interest. So if you're interested in sponsoring please apply, we have an existing deadline at the end of October to apply. So please make sure that you do fill that out before the end of the month. What happens after, is that we'll review all applications. We have a limited number of spots for each level. We are going through some existing applications. We may be able to have some sponsorships that's available beyond the deadline, but we can't guarantee this. So we really encourage you to fill out the form. You will hear back from us really quickly once the application is being approved to proceed and then we'll then give you the point of contact, which will be our marketing agency, and they will then help you bringing new sponsorship to life. So these are next steps. Now what I may do is, I may get Stuart to come back online with your camera. And then let's take some questions from our partners Okay.

So I will start by -- Can you please provide more detail on the partner theaters? What are they, I guess, that coming from a sponsor -- coming from -- sorry, a partner that haven't been involved in the partner theater. Can you please take us through the difference between the parent theater and other sessions?