IBM was losing their innovation bona fides. For several years, growth had been stagnating in the low single digits. Instead of writing about IBM’s cutting-edge innovations, analysts locked in on lagging legacy business units. So in late 2021, IBM spun off its managed services arm (roughly 25% of the company) to focus on their core businesses: systems & solutions that drive growth for the world’s biggest companies. We had the opportunity to capitalize on this pivot and introduce a reinvigorated, more nimble IBM to the world.

The Brief: Show off what’s possible when you work with IBM by highlighting the cutting-edge solutions that IBM has co-created with some of the world’s biggest businesses.

Objectives: We needed to drive radical reappraisal and cast aside perceptions of legacy IBM. We needed to show how IBM’s products are a platform for growth, and make the brand relevant to today’s B2B tech buyers.

Creativity is the secret sauce for competing in an ever-evolving business world. But IBM believes creativity today needs to be redefined: it’s about applying technology in new ways that drive change.

The truth is, creation requires collaboration. Business leaders are searching for the right partner to help bring their game-changing ideas to life. So rather than telling them what IBM does, we focused on the “What ifs” in our prospective customers’ businesses. Those groundbreaking, innovative, imaginative ideas that are driving industry change.

Our core audience wants to reinvent the rules and do things differently. To appeal to them, we had to do just that.

Through those two small words — “What if” — we reinvented the traditional B2B case study, not just for a century-old brand, but for an entire industry. And inspired our audience to say, “What if IBM could do that for my business?”

IT purchase decisions are done by committee - with an average of 14-23 people weighing in. Although IBM has strong support within their current customer base, the audience is bifurcating.

Today’s IBM purchasers are older, senior IT decision makers who are aging out. The future, where we need to plant the seeds of reappraisal, is Millennial IT decision makers. As Boomers retire, Millennials are gaining prominence in their businesses–in fact, 74% are already involved in buying decisions for their company.

They consider IBM trustworthy and have higher positive sentiment than Google, Microsoft, and Amazon. But for this audience, trust is table stakes. They want partners, not suppliers.

These tech-natives are looking to do way more than keep the lights on. They’re taking on leadership roles, and shaping the way their companies do business.

And they need help–and confidence in their solutions–in order to do so.

What if, rather than telling our audience what IBM does, we showed them what’s possible? And made real customer stories actually fun to watch? Visualizing abstract technology so it makes sense to everyone. Now there’s an idea.

We reimagined IBM’s decades-old design system — updating it to be as cutting-edge as their tech. To create our signature “What If” world, we designed new weights within the IBM Plex typeface. And built hundreds of 3D animations centered around different industries and IBM technology. Altogether, the production process took 14 weeks.

We produced 6 films, combining CG, live action, kinetic typography, and a foot-stomping soundtrack. The films aired during some of the most-watched events in the world, like The Oscars, NCAA’s March Madness tournament, and The Masters. We extended the campaign with newspaper and audio ads running in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, and their respective podcast networks.

We started seeing positive results almost immediately. Within the first week of the campaign, we saw engaged visits to IBM.com increase 25%. Seven out of 10 people exposed to the campaign found it relevant, a 46% increase over B2B norms, And 73% said that are likely to consider IBM after viewing the creative, outperforming B2B norms by 40%.

Overall, the IT decision makers we surveyed loved the work, 70% of them to be precise! One respondent told us “??It's stylish, creative, innovative, slick, makes a point, informative, relatable and visually stunning.” Others said that it was a “fresh take for IBM” and appreciated that IBM “acknowledged the struggle that I experience with the different platforms my company uses”.

Let’s be realistic - for this audience, purchase cycles–and therefore reappraisal–happens over the course of years, not months. But these early KPIs indicate that we are beginning to move the needle.