[ben7799]

I think why this rings false to many is that McConaughey is definitely extremely replaceable.

If that is already sunk money and they paid it to him before the layoffs than the article is off base.

But why is he at $10M not replaceable by some other celebrity who might do the work for 10x or 100x less? He has no special credibility around anything to do with Salesforce, CRM, or anything in tech.

It's more likely Benioff has a man crush on him and like the fact he gets to hang out with a famous movie star and pretend he's friends with him or something and can conveniently ignore that he's kind of buying a famous friend for $10M.

A really well executed ad campaign with a less famous, less expensive star might be far more effective.