The Brief

Software developers get invited to lots of conferences. As IBM was hosting the Rational Software Conference of 2009 their challenge was to connect with developers in a unique, meaningful way. IBM had ambitious attendance goals. But even more ambitious sales lead objectives. The campaign's insight was that developers aren't robotic dullards, but actually quite creative, with a tremendous passion for do-it-yourself innovation. This led to the strategy of appealing to their innovative inquisitiveness.

Creative Execution

The campaign started with a wonderful insight about the true character of the software developer target, and played to their strengths through a ‘how did they do that’ viral that led directly to them discussing the viral among their peers and, in the end, signing up for the Conference.

Describe the creative solution to the brief/objective.

We first seeded a viral video deep within the IT digital community to intrigue the developer's technological curiosity. In the video, a developer, with help from is techie friends, puts together a mobile phone light show; actually it's a creative marriage proposal to his girlfriend. The video, seen on SNS and video sites, and on the most influential IT blogs, sent viewers to software discussion groups, where they could click through to register for the IBM Conference.

Results

"Look how a software developer proposes!" became the hot viral title both within developer circles and out. It attracted over 2,200,000 viewers in one month. Further exposure on 3rd party websites, attracted a stunning 21,875,000 impressions. In the end: *Attendance was 43% above target. *Webcast viewership of Conference was 260,000, 160% above target. *Revenue through validated leads totaled $9.23M, 54% above target. *A less quantifiable, but perhaps equally valuable result was how the message of IBM innovation got clearly communicated.