Tech firm tricks San Francisco with slew of celebrity doppelgangers

Salesforce’s Dreamforce conference brought Matthew McConaughey, Viola Davis, Spike Lee, Seth Meyers and Demi Lovato to downtown San Francisco this year, so it seemed feasible that Snoop Dogg would be posing with backpack-clad conferencegoers inside Moscone Center.

But no: The photo op was with professional impersonator Eric Finch. 

That’s because OSF Digital, a tech consulting firm with a booth in a corner of Moscone Center’s sprawling conference hall, played a little promotional trick on conference attendees this week. The company hired three celebrity impersonators — embodying Bono on Tuesday, Snoop Dogg on Wednesday and Justin Timberlake on Thursday — to help its booth stand out in the crowded room.

The idea came to OSF Digital’s marketing team, vice president of alliances and marketing Becky Wright told SFGATE on Thursday, after a customer complained that other consulting firms were pitching them on artificial intelligence ideas without any concrete specifics. The thought inspired OSF Digital, which Wright said has worked with AI for five years, to focus on differentiating itself from what she called other companies’ “smoke and mirrors.” The company decided to try out a “Beware of imposters” campaign after Wright blurted out the idea in a brainstorming session, and eventually landed on the idea to bring celebrity impersonators to Dreamforce.

At first, OSF Digital was envisioning an Arnold Schwarzenegger lookalike. But after one impersonation agency fell through, the company got a hold of George Banfalvi and his firm, Fifth Avenue Events & Entertainment. Banfalvi’s roster didn’t include a Schwarzenegger impersonator, but he did offer the three performers who eventually ended up at Dreamforce (along with lookalikes of Leonardo DiCaprio, Amy Winehouse and others).

Banfalvi thought Dreamforce made total sense as an impersonation spot, he told SFGATE. Fees to hire his performers usually run somewhere from $3,000 to $10,000, he said, depending on the actor and the amount of work required for the appearances.

At OSF Digital’s booth in Moscone, all the impersonators had to do was take photos with passersby. Wright said the company was thrilled with the response from conferencegoers, adding that messages rained in from impressed colleagues and friends all over the world. She showed SFGATE a screenshot one friend had sent her from a Facebook group for U2 superfans, in which Banfalvi’s Bono impersonator was throwing up a peace sign alongside a lanyard-wearing techie.

“We even had an Irish woman cry when she met Bono, and then tell her colleague that it changed her life,” Wright said.

“It’s gone far beyond what I thought it would do,” she added. She said she felt a little bad for nearby booths because the lines for Bono’s and Snoop Dogg’s impersonators were so long. (When SFGATE walked by the OSF Digital booth on Thursday, it seemed the Timberlake impersonator had drawn less of a crowd.)

The use of celebrity impersonators is a murky legal area, especially for advertisements, but Banfalvi said he’s never gotten complaints. Representatives for Bono, Snoop Dogg and Justin Timberlake didn’t immediately respond to SFGATE’s requests for comment.

Finch, the Snoop Dogg impersonator, has turned his similarity to the famous rapper into a form of minor celebrity. He’s appeared on the musician’s Instagram page (caption: “2 snoops”), plus as a guest on the show “The Masked Singer.” 

Peter Lillyman, who impersonated Timberlake on the final day of Dreamforce at OSF’s booth, told SFGATE he runs his own roofing company in Nebraska and keeps his fee for impersonations pretty high so he doesn’t have to fly out for smaller gigs. He said he’s a huge fan of the pop star and would love to meet him (though is fairly tired of his music at this point). To get his beard the perfect Timberlake tone, he applied some dye before Dreamforce, he said.

Lillyman and Finch met up on Wednesday night near the conference, and several police officers stopped them for photos, Lillyman said. The impersonators explained their true identities, but as usual, the intrigued onlookers still wanted to capture the moment. 

Banfalvi told SFGATE that Finch called him after his encounter with Lillyman to relay what had happened.

“Somewhere in the archives of the SFPD, there’s a photo of those two guys,” Banfalvi joked.