HO, HO, HO!
Dec. 22 (Contra Costa Times/KRTBN)--The battling billboards along Highway 101, a physical manifestation of the bruising yet
tongue-in-cheek rivalry of high-technology companies, is of the can-you-top-this variety.
In the latest salvo in the war of advertising words, PeopleSoft Inc. may just have topped its archrival, Germany-based SAP, without ever
leasing a billboard of its own.
Car-poolers caught in the daily traffic congestion near Redwood Shores this week were treated to an entertaining trompe l'oeil: a mannequin in
front of a giant SAP billboard that reads, "Our software isn't just for big companies. It's just for big thinkers," wearing, not its usual natty
SAP-designed business suit, but a bright white sweatshirt emblazoned with a red PeopleSoft logo.
If officials at the Pleasanton-based PeopleSoft know the identity of the quick-change artist who scaled the billboard to pull off the humorous
stunt that turned the SAP big thinker into a PeopleSoft big thinker, they're not talking. But word has it a companywide e-mail cheered the
mannequin's transformation into a "vision of sartorial splendor."
Of course, billboard battles are nothing new in Silicon Valley. When Informix leased a billboard right outside Oracle's corporate headquarters
that read: "warning, dinosaurs crossing," Oracle CEO Larry Ellison put up a billboard of his own, pointing to Informix's lawsuit over the
defection of 13 engineers to Oracle. |
