The tech company’s new tagline is ‘Let’s Create’
IBM is a charting a new course for its brand in what the tech company says is its most significant campaign in more than a decade.
The company has rolled out a new global campaign from Ogilvy themed around the tagline, “Let’s Create.” Narrated by Donald Glover, a simple 30-second spot shows a blank page and a cursor followed by text illustrating some of IBM’s core business goals. The campaign will also encompass digital, paid social, out-of-home and other channels.
IBM says it’s the first chapter in a new effort to redefine its brand following the spinoff of its managed infrastructure business into a new company called Kyndryl late last year. The goal of this initial stage is to sharpen perception of IBM’s new purpose around business ingenuity and helping companies evolve their technology. The next phase will focus on real-world examples of IBM clients and the third will revolve around “New Creators” using technology.
“It really puts the spotlight on creativity and how important that is in developing the solutions and answers to the challenges facing our clients and our partners,” said Jonathan Adashek, chief communications officer and svp of marketing and communications at IBM. “It’s not a rebrand—I look at it more as a re-introduction of the IBM of today.”
Adashek said IBM has historically had trouble articulating a clear and unifying purpose for a business as sprawling and multifaceted as the 110-year-old enterprise giant has become. But with business moves like the Kyndryl spinoff helping to strengthen the company’s core focus on growth areas like artificial intelligence and hybrid cloud computing, IBM decided it was time to boil down its public-facing message.
“We tried to make it really, really simple for people to understand because, if I’m going to be candid, we haven’t always been simple and clear in telling the world what we do and why we do it and who we do it for,” Adashek said.
Creativity in a business ingenuity sense
Ogilvy global chief creative officer Liz Taylor said the concept for the campaign evolved out of the idea that a certain type of creative thinking is central to the business projects that many IBM clients are attempting to tackle—and that the company’s range of enterprise tech and consulting services can help with that.
“It really started in the sort of notion of this era of creativity is the defining currency of business,” Taylor said. “It’s not necessarily creativity in the way I might think of my job, but our audience is just increasingly responsible for creating and executing visions for how to compete in this new world.”
Taylor said the campaign to come will be unusual for business-to-business marketing in attempting to be more emotionally resonant. “It just was a great rally cry and felt very different from anything IBM has done in the past,” Taylor said. “It’s filled with a lot of emotion and heart, as well as the expertise that that they bring. It’s about shining a light on creativity and business, which I think is needed now more than ever.”
