Software Marketing Pranks

I envy software marketing types.  They get to stay kids forever: pull pranks and even get paid for it.:-)

Today’s example comes courtesy of TechCrunch: PayPal competitor WePay dropped a 600lbs ice block at the entrance of the Paypal developer conference.  They got chased away and Moscone security removed the ice block.   My question: who gets the money?  Those are real dollar bills in the ice…

But don’t for a minute think it’s only at startup-land where 20-somethings rule.. the enterprise gray-hairs like pranks, too.  Below are some gems from the past.

NetSuite raining on Sage‘s parade conference:

NetSuite is quite a regular at competitor conferences, see their trucks at SAP’s annual SAPPHIRE conference:

Talk about SAP, I don’t think I’ve ever landed at a SAPPHIRE destination without the airport painted red – by Oracle ads.  SAP does not retaliate in-kind … they are Germans:-) (Well, there are urban legends about Hasso Plattner mooning Larry Ellison at a sailing race, but I doubt there is any photographic evidence…)

Talk about Oracle, their Redwood Shores HQ along highway 101 is a primary magnet for such billboards, like this classic from Informix – unfortunately I can’t locate a decent sized photo, but here’s a short story of their billboard wars.

And of course we should not forget about Salesforce.com – here’s one of their classics, predicting Siebel’s demise:

Of course what goes around comes around – this time courtesy of Zoho:

And don’t for a minute think Zoho is the only “little guy” biting the big one:

Box.net has certainly come a long way from the humble start And for all their thankfulness, they do take the gloves off:

Do you have a photo of similar edgy software billboards?  Let me know, I might just post it here

For now, let’s close it with a funny video: NetSuite vs. Great Plains (Microsoft):

The next video (did I say “close” before? I lied:-) ) by Kashflow may put you to sleep – but it delivers the message: boxed software is dead.