Insight: Instinctively, no one wants a computer to beat a human at anything. It conjures up visions of Skynet from Terminator or HAL from 2001: Space Odyssey. But what if people could empathise with a computer? Understand exactly how hard it is for a computer to do anything human?Execution: Take people behind the scenes and get them excited about the science. We created an avatar as a public face for Watson and we documented Watson’s progress for two years. We explained the science behind the machine and educated the world about the possibilities of this impressive leap in technology.

• Watson became a pop culture icon: featured on US talk shows, Saturday Night Live, inspired an American Idol parody, and even reached global news programming.• Garnered over one billion impressions worth $50 million in earned media.

• 70% of the US population was aware of the IBM Jeopardy! Challenge in the weeks following the event.

• 40% of the US population aware of the event had a positive change in perception of IBM vs. 1% negative change – proving we minimised the Skynet/HAL comparison.

• Traffic to ibm.com increased by 556% during the month of the challenge.