IBM’s AI offerings aren’t always top of mind for business decision-makers looking to deploy AI solutions. Even worse, those offerings are seen as difficult to integrate into existing technology plans. But in reality that’s not true. With this work, we needed to show that IBM isn’t just willing

actively co-creating “win-win-win” tech partnerships: win for IBM, win for partners, win for clients.

IBM partners with Adobe, enabling brands to create content with GenAI that meets critical enterprise needs like speed, personalization, and brand safety — a huge deal as more and more brands use GenAI to create what they put out in the world.

At the Adobe Summit, we needed to raise awareness of our partnership and show marketing leaders how IBM gives brands the most trustworthy access to the creative possibilities unlocked by Adobe.

IBM keeps your AI in check so you can trust the content you create. We brought this message to life by turning the Sphere into a giant fishbowl of AI-created goldfish “gone wrong” which we then “turned right.” The fish were created with the help of Adobe’s AI product, Firefly, literally proving our message that we could trust what we create with GenAI.

The fish took over the Summit, educating attendees on the ways AI could go wrong and how IBM can help. The fishy AI appeared at IBM’s booth, in OOH, in Keynotes, on merch and in a digital experience that let attendees take the fishy fish—and the info on how to guard against them—home.

With the right content in the right environment to the most relevant audience, our message cut through, letting us show up big, with a big message about the biggest thing on every marketer's mind.

Our primary audience was attendees at the Adobe Summit — marketing leaders at large enterprises looking to implement generative AI to streamline their content creation and delivery. As they begin to create more marketing materials with GenAI, this audience is overwhelmingly concerned with their ability to implement generative AI solutions with accuracy and quality, to integrate with their existing technology, and to trust in those solutions.

Still, despite the innumerable ways an AI-powered asset can go wrong —from copyright infringement to being deficient in quality to breaking brand guidelines— using AI governance tools for marketing may not be an enterprise’s first priority investment.

Our creative strategy — Trust What You Create — was a provocation, and a challenge to marketers. As you start to create content with generative AI, content that represents your brand, your values, your message… how are you going to be confident you can trust it?

We proved our Trust What You Create message by demonstrating it with our own creative. During the Adobe Summit, we turned the Sphere into a giant fishbowl filled with “goldfish gone wrong” — representations of the outcomes that can occur when your AI is unmanaged. Each of the “Fishy AI” characters was made with the help of Adobe Firefly, reinforcing our belief in our own message.

Using Firefly, we generated 250+ different fish images over the course of 12 weeks — for example, exploiting all the different ways a “disco ball goldfish” could look. The look of the fish walked a fine line. They had to be clearly “wrong” (for goldfish) but also engaging, and, most importantly, on brand for IBM — a premium, sophisticated brand.

Getting the characters accurate was important since our message was about keeping your AI-created assets in check so what’s created doesn’t feel off-brand.

The fish were conceived in 2D, but to generate motion-capable assets, we had to model, texture, light, rig, animate, and composite within traditional 3D software tools like Maya, Substance, Houdini, Nuke, etc.

The process was a design challenge on many levels: The sheer size of the Sphere. Telling a story from every angle of a 360-degree spherical format. The number of bespoke fish, each with unique narrative and design characteristics. And the fact that we needed to make them look natural swimming around the Sphere, which we achieved by defining gravitational forces so they’d appear to be moving naturally, as if through water.

The fish also had to live off the Sphere; they were featured at IBM hero spaces and moments at the summit: on an ambient LED archway at IBM’s main booth, in Keynote presentations, on digital posters, in giant animated OOHs and inside a digital experience.

We needed to raise awareness of IBM’s partnership with Adobe and showcase IBM’s capabilities as an AI partner, so we measured success by earned media and perception lift of watsonx with conference attendees. Our campaign helped spark PR for IBM and Adobe; between editorial articles and organic social conversation, we drove 618M estimated earned impressions. Our organic social garnered an additional 209.5K impressions for the partnership, while our organic Instagram assets averaged an engagement rate of 3.1%, a huge lift from our benchmark of .57%.

Lastly, we compared conference attendees' and general audience perceptions of watsonx. We found that those who attended the Adobe Summit and saw our work were more likely to view watsonx as trusted (+15pp), explainable (+19pp), and easy to integrate (+22pp).

Our campaign drove awareness of IBM’s partnership, and improved perception of IBM as a trusted AI partner.