Big Tech company Salesforce’s latest act stars Matthew McConaughey, rounds of layoffs, and a loving embrace of AI.
This Super Bowl Sunday, McConaughey appeared in a Salesforce advertisement focused on promoting the cloud-based software company’s AI-powered assistant Agentforce. Part of a larger campaign titled “Agentforce. What AI Was Meant to Be,” the ad showed McConaughey experiencing travel woes without the potential salve of the AI tool. Woody Harrelson was there too.
It’s far from the start of the brand’s partnership with McConaughey. The actor also worked with Salesforce for an ad focused on a sustainability effort in 2022’s Super Bowl. He was paid $5 million for said promotion, according to the Wall Street Journal. It was a small tradeoff compared to the cost of payroll for Salesforce’s staff, according to CEO Marc Benioff.
Information regarding how much McConaughey was paid this year is not yet available, but sources tell The Hollywood Reporter that A-list stars rake in $3 million to $5 million for Super Bowl commercials.
Sources familiar with the company’s partnership with McConaughey told the WSJ that the actor is paid more than $10 million annually for his work with Salesforce. Benioff told the newspaper that he had no hand in the deal; rather, McConaughey’s package (which included cash and equity) was approved by Salesforce’s compensation committee.
McConaughey seems to have more staying power than many on the Salesforce staff, which has, like much of tech, been subjected to rounds of layoffs.
Salesforce did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Salesforce’s partnership with AI and McConaughey
In the shadow of the brand’s early partnership with McConaughey stood rounds of layoffs. In early 2023, Benioff announced that the company was set to let go of 10% of staff in the following weeks. That all came after some major executive departures and Benioff’s claims that the workers hired during the pandemic were less productive than previous generations of employees.
McConaughey’s ad pushes the very tools that potentially threaten the Salesforce workforce.
Just this past week, Salesforce announced it was cutting 1,000 roles in favor of hiring salespeople for its AI products, a source familiar with the matter told Bloomberg.
As thousands of Salesforce workers lose their jobs, it seems McConaughey has stayed on the payroll.
