Marc Benioff Thanks IBM For Giving Him His Latest Marketing Spiel

Marc Benioff has a new catch phrase from Salesforce. Out is phrase "social enterprise" and in is the phrase "become a customer company."

Benioff had to give up the "social enterprise" last year because the phrase was originally used by non-profits to indicate social active companies.

When he tried to trademark the phrase, he got a bunch of push back from these non-profits objecting to the idea.

So, the marketing genius was left without a marketing catch phrase for Salesforce. The new one came to Benioff from reading IBM's Leading Through Connections report, a survey of 1700 CEOs. In it, they talked about improving customer service.

Shortly after reading it, he attended the 2013 CES show and saw lots of "connected products," he said. For instance, he saw Cannon's iPhone app that takes pictures from a DSLR camera sitting across the room and then email the photo or post it to a social network

He wanted the app to let him do more, like buy more products from third-parties or contact Cannon with questions.

A light bulb went off. Soon all products would be connected to apps which would connect to more third-party apps and so on. Social media and connected products help companies create better customer service.

He's calling this hyper-connected world "building a customer company."