No, Benioff’s Blurt Isn’t a Lesson to All CEOs

Just to get you up to speed:

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has been known for the last three decades as a stakeholder capitalist—a progressive business guy, a big contributor to the Democratic party and generally a do-gooder, if you believe billionaires can be described as such.

Week before last, Benioff gave a phone interview to The New York Times and told the reporter, “I fully support the President,” and said he thinks the National Guard should be sent into Salesforce’s corporate home town of San Francisco. “We don’t have enough cops, so if they can be cops, I’m all for it,” Benioff said. After referring his PR person’s open mouth, Benioff said, “What about the political questions? Too spicy?” And hung up.

After the week of predictable sturm und drang that distracted from Salesforce’s big annual Dreamforce conference and included the noisy resignation of a hugely influential member of the board of the company’s philanthropic arm, Benioff issued a mumbled apology. He said his remarks “came from an abundance of caution” about security for Dreamforce, and said, “I sincerely apologize for the concern it caused.”

Now Adweek columnist Mark Ritson comes in, sharing his magnificent grasp of the obvious. “The Salesforce brand is bigger than all of this, but its halo is slightly cracked,” Ritson wroteTuesday. “Employees feel embarrassed. Investors are wary. Purpose-driven brands don’t pivot politically without destroying their core. You can’t sell stakeholder capitalism one week and praise Trumpian troop deployments the next. It’s the corporate equivalent of Patagonia launching disposable plastic tents.”

Ritson’s remedy for Benioff’s hypocrisy, foolishness, insensitivity and boorishness? CEOs should stop engaging on civic issues.

“We’ve spent too long admiring leaders who excel at getting themselves and their brands involved above their station,” Ritson writes. “The risk versus rewards of such prominence are asymmetrical. Marc Benioff gained nothing from his comments … but lost big. … In these turbulent times, opportunities to take a stance will arrive daily. Journalists will bait you. Activists will pressure you. Your ego will whisper that your voice matters on every issue. Resist.”

As a bad editor once remarked on a paragraph of mine: Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Feel like there are a few remedies to this one-car collision short of, all CEOs should just stop talking.

For instance:

1. Don’t talk to reporters halfway through your third gin and tonic?
2. Even on your third gin and tonic: When your communication person starts making weird faces, put the reporter on hold for a moment?
3. Even when you’re on your third gin and the comms person is making faces, remember the difference between the National Guard and corporate security guards?
4. And even when you’re on your third gin, the communicator’s making faces and you’ve mixed up the National Guard with corporate security guards, don’t forget everything you’ve been saying since you founded Salesforce in 1999 (whether you believed it or not), and voice your support for an administration that goes against all of that stuff (whether you believe in the administration or not)?

But don’t you think most CEOs already know that stuff?