IBM: Not Easy [01:53]

Credits & Description:

Title: Not Easy
Agency: Ogilvy New York
Brand: Ibm
Country: USA
Entrant Company: Ogilvy New York
Advertising Agency: Ogilvy New York
Media Agency: Neo@Ogilvy, New York
Pr Agency: Ibm, New York / Kidinakorner, Los Angeles
Production Company: The Mill, New York / Kidinakorner, Los Angeles / Ogilvy New York
Senior Planner: Nika Gokhman (Ogilvy New York)
Chief Creative Officer: Teddy Lynn (Ogilvy New York)
President, Content & Social: Mark Himmelsbach (Ogilvy New York)
Group Creative Director: Aaron Mosher (Ogilvy New York)
Group Creative Director: David Yankelewitz (Ogilvy New York)
Chief Creative Officer: Steve Simpson (Ogilvy New York)
Executive Creative Director: Jeff Curry (Ogilvy New York)
Creative Director: Alvaro Masa (Ogilvy New York)
Creative Director: Jens Sjobergh (Ogilvy New York)
Creative Director: Viktor Jacobsson (Ogilvy New York)
Senior Copy Writer: Chad Oconnell (Ogilvy New York)
Senior Copy Writer: Tyler Carrington (Ogilvy New York)
Film Director: Emily Anderson (Ogilvy New York)
Executive Music Producer: Karl Westman (Ogilvy New York)
Executive Producer: David Ross (Ogilvy New York)
Executive Producer: Kara Masi (Ogilvy New York)
Executive Producer: Sarah Pascale (Ogilvy New York)
Executive Producer: Steve Ford (Ogilvy New York)
Managing Director: Liam Parker (Ogilvy New York)
Executive Group Director: Joan Voltz (Ogilvy New York)
Executive Director: Andrew Fair (Ogilvy New York)
Account Director: Sean Palmer (Ogilvy New York)
Account Supervisor: Tim Graves (Ogilvy New York)
Account Executive: Alexa Mouta (Ogilvy New York)
Account Executive: Kyle Ross (Ogilvy New York)
Account Executive: Lindsey Harris (Ogilvy New York)
Group Planning Director: Eva Augustyn (Ogilvy New York)
Director Of Creative Strategy: Jeremy Wilson (Ogilvy New York)
Media Director: Sarah Greenfield (Neo@Ogilvy)
Associate Media Director: Sana Jawaid (Neo@Ogilvy)
Ceo / Founder: Alex Da Kid (Kidinakorner)
President, Brands: Mason Reed (Kidinakorner)
Creative Director: Jason Nitti (Kidinakorner)
Director Of Integrated Production: Mungo Maclagan (Kidinakorner)
Head Of Strategy: Jared Gruner (Kidinakorner)
Head Of Sync & Music Licensing: Zach Sinick (Kidinakorner)
Producer: Bindy St. Leger (The Mill)
2d Lead: Jeff Robins (The Mill)
Editor: Joe Simons (The Mill)
Campaign Description:
Grammy-winning producer Alex Da Kid used Watson to inspire his hit song, “Not Easy.” Watson analyzed five years of cultural and music data to unlock new insights and help inform Alex’s creative process. Overall, Watson analyzed almost 2.8 million lines of text, thousands of songs, over 21,000 tweets and blogs that were relevant to the emerging themes in both music and culture. Alex could then interact with this data, dive into areas of interest, and find inspiration using an interactive experience built on Watson’s data and generated by the Cognitive Color Design Tool. Inspired by Watson’s findings and his own experience, Alex created a song about one of the most prolific themes over the last five years, ‘heartbreak.’The objective was to gain exposure for IBM cognitive technology by demonstrating a new era where man and machine work together to achieve things they couldn’t before.
Execution:
In February 2016, Alex toured the Watson Experience Center, learning how Watson’s ability to see the unstructured data invisible to other computers is helping leaders in various industries outthink their greatest challenges. Seeing Watson at work in these industries inspired Alex to use Watson’s abilities to create a hit song for all to access music platforms. In April 2016, IBM and Alex applied Watson’s abilities to culture and music, through the analysis of various data sets (Wikipedia pages, NYTimes front pages, art exhibits, song lyrics, etc.). Watson used a variety of APIs throughout this analysis, including Watson Alchemy Language and Watson Tone Analyzer APIs, Watson Beat, and the Cognitive Color Design Tool. After four months of analysis, Alex was inspired to write “Not Easy,” which launched on October 21, 2016. IBM and Alex also brought Watson’s data analysis to life through color visualization, using the IBM Cognitive Color Design Tool. An orchestration of projectors visually depicted the five years of culture and music – translating Watson’s analysis into an interactive, color-filled experience – and helped inspire Alex’s song.The song reached #1 & #2 on the Spotify US & Global Viral 50 Chart on day 2 of launch, #1 iTunes, and top 10 of the Billboard Top 100 Hits, and song of the week on Shazam. Online video content resulted in over 14 million views across social channels. The story of the collaboration was covered across national news media and pop culture including Rolling Stone, The Wall Street Journal, The Bill Maher Show, Business Insider, Billboard.com, Fader, and many more.Partnering with a Grammy award-winning producer, IBM was able to penetrate culture and gain wide exposure for the Watson brand. We demonstrated the possibilities of Watson in creative industries, allowing IBM’s core audience to imagine what IBM could do for their