The Campaign

Branded Entertainment is just beginning to become well-used in China where this film was shown. In China, there are fairly strict censorship laws, restricting any kind of entertainment that doesn't follow the guidelines of the state in terms of violence, sexual promiscuity, or events or conduct that would seem detrimental to society. This is, of course, why most of the programming in China, branded or otherwise, tends to be on the bland side.

Results

The communication objective is tell the story of how China's Privately Owned Enterprises (POE) are the silent heroes of China's economic rise. The campaign built a storytelling platform to celebrate the POEs and what contribution they've made to society, while expressing the essence of their success, partially through IT innovation—a subtle but important tie to IBM. The film told the story of a frigid father and son relationship, and how their relationship improved through a simple trip to the movies. The story was a vehicle to express the value that a local business, like a movie theatre, can have within our lives. In this case, it provided the location where the needed reflection by a son on his father's love and importance in his life was fostered. And this, in turn, helped make the point about the importance of comfortable local environments and the local businesses that are such a big part of our lives, though we often take them for granted.

This piece of content was part of a Weibo (China's Twitter) campaign that hosted many of IBM's Private Owner Enterprises stories in video formats, including the submitted stories of IBM followers. Interest built up, and more and more were drawn to the content over time through the Weibo tweets and forwards, shared by friends. This "To the Movies" piece of content, about giving support to China's private businesses (POEs) at the end received enormous support, comments and discussions.

Through Weibo social media, the campaign collected 31,529 stories from followers, 38% greater than IBM's target, from which this produced film came. Nearly 100,000 viewed this film, which spread far beyond the B2B audience, which was the desired effect, resulting in over 5,800 comments as well. But the biggest result was the over $40M the campaign has generated from the over 300 new IBM accounts, a 52% YTD increase, and a truly fabulous outcome.