Results and Effectiveness

Just a week after the campaign began, 41,510 were following the BAO journey, while in the end over 9,700,000 were exposed to the social media campaign. Forum attendee numbers exceeded IBM’s goals by 37%. And instead of becoming more technical and analytical, IBM became more human.

Creative Execution

A young Chinese journalist was sent to begin a dialogue about a variety of topics the Chinese were interested in, including African culture, everyday life as well as AIDS research. As she moved within the foreign land, she communicated about what she experienced via Weibo, China’s very popular Twitter substitute. The more topics she brought up, the more followers and responders she had. One responder IBM strategically placed into the dialogue was named BAO. Their back and forth communications explained just how the IBM tool helped doctors explore unique new treatments. She also tweeted about other BAO cases, which were relevant to both Africa’s and China’s everyday problems. And since Weibo allows video to be posted, the communications were even more engaging.

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

IBM China was introducing their BAO (Business Analytics Optimization) tool to a C-Suite target through a standard industry Forum. So how could they bring both the Forum and the BAO offering to life in an unexpected, engaging way that wasn’t weighed down by overly technical data-oriented analytics? Africa has been more and more becoming an economics partner to China and topic of interest to the country and its people. At the same time, one of the best BAO cases has been its use in AIDs research in Africa. This insight served the desire to engage and not overburden the campaign with analytic-speak.