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Ironically there wasn’t a cloud in the sky as the Salesforce1 World Tour hit Melbourne on a beautiful autumn day. This was the first major event of its kind in Victoria, and the cloud leader, salesforce.com, was met with open arms.

Despite the global tour, the day still had a distinctly Aussie character, with the two showcase customers - Gumtree and Hills (http://www.hills.com.au/). The first is a quintessentially Australian brand with the gumtree itself characterising the landscape. The second is one of Australia’s most treasured brands, with the Hill’s Hoist a celebrated Aussie invention with a place in every back-yard. With more than 3,000 Australians registered for the day

Of course Saasy did his best to keep the audience abuzz while they waited for proceedings to get under way, even with a spot of break-dancing!

Excitement before the keynote was palpable throughout the Cloud Expo as soon as registration opened, as it always is when Vivek Kundra, Salesforce Industries EVP and former CIO to the United States, is presenting. As the keynote doors opened, seats quickly filled and it was standing room only by the time Peter Coffee began his traditional - and yet always innovation-laden - pre-show. The first significant guest of the keynote was Deborah Warner of Australian Cancer Research Fund, who spoke inspiringly about the challenges and opportunities of being a cancer-fighting not-for profit in Australia. "Australia punches way above its weight when it comes to cancer research" she told the audience, and "I want you to be successful and then think about how you can give something back" she urged them to enthusiastic applause.

The main highlight of the keynote was the great unveil of salesforce.com’s latest showcase customer story in Australia, Hills

The iconic Australian brand is using Salesforce1 to fundamentally transform what has become a engineering and digital conglomerate since the days it first took the famous clothes line to market in 1945.

 

“We didn’t chose Salesforce for technical reasons, but for cultural ones,” Hills CEO Ted Pretty told the keynote audience as he explained how fundamental Salesforce1 has been to his very bold transformation plans. 

Following the customer videos, Derek (@derektweets) Laney walked the audience through a very innovative demonstration of how Salesforce1 assists Sony Playstation in the way they target customers, but arrested attendees with a number of realities that made his solution most compelling: ““Australias adoption of mobile apps is better than rest of the world, but we suck at location-based marketing” -he told the audience, “up to 60 per cent of advertising spend is wasted targeting people who will never buy and 93 per cent of Aussie marketers aren’t using location information data in their marketing activity.” While the demos were greatly enjoyed, as always it is the customer stories that hold the most value for customers and prospects alike as this tweet demonstrates:

Following the Hills reveal, the Gumtree video, the Playstation demo and much much more, the keynote audience spilled out into the Cloud Expo and salesforce.com Campground for a day of learning and networking. Here are some photos from the day and some of the tweets that capture the mood of the first - but certainly not the least - major salesforce.com event in Melbourne...

 
Post by Salesforce.