Salesforce recently signed a $689 million acquisition deal with Buddy Media, a marketing company that connects brands to customers through social media. Buddy Media will become part of the company for cloud computing and customer-relationship management this summer. What is remarkable about this acquisition is that the conversation is being dominated by a personal response video created by Buddy Media CEO Michael Lazerow two hours after signing the deal.
Lazerow appears at the beginning of the video sitting silently behind his Apple iPad as he scrolls through a series of text slides to music. Through the video, Lazerow’s slides describe his emotional response to the sale of Buddy Media while smiling or nodding occasionally. He shares his near-death experiences as a result of a heart problem, how those experiences have helped him to avoid fear and his pleasure with the sale of his company. The conversation that started as a result of Lazerow’s video has largely been positive, with people empathizing with Lazerow, calling the video “inspiring” and sharing the video mainly through Twitter and blogs.
This week, Murray Newlands discusses Lazerow’s video in detail in the newest episode of “Future of Engagement.” Newlands sheds light on Lazerow’s reasons for creating the video and talks about what you can learn from Lazerow’s actions after the sale of Buddy Media.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0YAFdWVsP4[/embed]
Social media monitoring tool Alerti was used to make the graph. It is evident through the information that most of the conversation about Lazerow’s video has been over Twitter and blogs.