IBM: SEER WIMBLEDON

Credits & Description:

Category: Business Products & Services
Advertiser: IBM
Product/Service: IT SOLUTIONS
Agency: OGILVYONE
Date of First Appearance: Jul 28 2009 12:00AM
Entrant Company: OGILVYONE, London, UNITED KINGDOM
Copywriter: Pavlos Themistocleous (OgilvyOne London)
Art Director: Jamie Romain (OgilvyOne London)
Executive Creative Director: Colin Nimick (OgilvyOne London)
Creative Director: Emma de La Fosse (OgilvyOne London)
Creative Director: Charlie Wilson (OgilvyOne London)
Ibm Business Partner: Richard Barker (OgilvyOne London)
Senior Planner: Nina Mynk (OgilvyOne London)
Account Executive: Nick Bennett (OgilvyOne London)
Technical Lead: Dylan Smith (OgilvyOne London)
Digital Producer: Davide Sciola (OgilvyOne London)
Director Ogilvy Labs: Giles Rhys Jones (OgilvyOne London)
Digital Producer: Paul Randall (OgilvyOne London)
Account Manager: Will Howells (OgilvyOne London)
Designer: Maciek Strychalski (OgilvyOne London)
Designer: Andrew Mackay (OgilvyOne London)
Media placement: Mobile Application - Mobile Phones - 28/07/2009
Media placement: Ambient - Wimbledon Tennis Club - 28/7/09
Describe the brief/objective of the direct campaign.
IBM wants the world to know they can make the world a smarter place. Our brief was to use IBM’s sponsorship of the Wimbledon Tennis Championships to show how they do just that.Our target audience and prospective clients were attending the Wimbledon Championships as guests of IBM. Our aim was to encourage them to reappraise what IBM does and to encourage consideration from those who may have thought IBM were ‘not for them’. We also wanted to give, a traditionally faceless corporation, a face. A friendly one at that.
Explain why the creative execution was relevant to the product or service.
From a marketing perspective IBM has always had an interesting story to tell about Wimbledon. But people don’t come to Wimbledon to hear about IT solutions and partnerships. So, rather than writing ads telling everyone how smart IBM solutions are, we showed them. In pushing smartphone technology to its limits we created a truly engaging, and above all, useful piece of marketing. A piece of smart thinking that demonstrated IBM’s problem solving. We gave people a reason to believe IBM really is making the world smarter – marketing so useful it’s actually a service.
Describe the creative solution to the brief/objective with reference to the projected response rates and desired outcome.
We identified a problem faced by everyone who comes to Wimbledon; other people. More specifically crowds. Our solution? IBM Seer, a digital guide to Wimbledon. The first augmented reality app to use live data. A digital guide that let people know not only where things were but also how long they could expect to queue to get in or around them.VIP guests were given phones preloaded with the IBM Seer application as they arrived at the tournament. They got to experience a smarter Wimbledon first hand, courtesy of IBM.
Describe the results in as much detail as possible with particular reference to the RESPONSE of the target audience including deliverability statistics, response rates, click throughs, sales cost per response, relationships built and overall return on investment.
With the smallest media budget we’ve ever had we achieved an exceptional ROI of 1:156 and PR with an advertising value equivalent of £1,950,00. But this was also a campaign designed to challenge people’s perceptions of IBM beyond the event itself. The press coverage, blogger coverage and user engagement exceeded all expectations, expanding outside of the UK from the US to the Far East. We were featured in 60 news articles, on over 100 blogs and our demo film has had 43,315 views to date. (Not bad for a video of some fat fingers and a phone.)