PARALLEL PATHS

TitlePARALLEL PATHS
BrandIBM
Product / ServiceIBM
CategoryA01. Creative Effectiveness
EntrantOGILVY BEIJING, CHINA
Entrant Company OGILVY BEIJING, CHINA
Advertising Agency OGILVY BEIJING, CHINA

Credits

Name Company Position
Zhang Wei/Chen Shuo Post Producers
Wei Le Editor
Wang Fan Mixing
Er Dong Music
Li Chen Producer
Yang Bin Art Director
Wang Bin Sound Record
Wang Peng Camera
Zhang Hao Director
Ost-Studio Music Studio
Beijing Ant-X Production Co. Production Company
Charlie Wei Ogilvy Beijing Agency Producer
Major Lin/Sheng Lee/Suya Wang/Liu Ching Ogilvy Beijing Account Team
Liu Fang/Gary Cheng Ogilvy Beijing Art Directors
Wei Xu/Fish Yu Ogilvy Beijing Copywriters
Teonghoe Teng Ogilvy Beijing Creative Directo
Doug Schiff Ogilvy Beijing Executive Creative Director

Brief Explanation

This is the story of a product that had grown out of touch with its consumers and how an insightful piece of branded content managed to turn its fortunes around. Lotus Notes - IBM’s application product had been losing relevance as a business communication tool. In fact, the customer base for Lotus Notes had shrunk more than 35% in less than two years. Our challenge was to establish IBM software as savvy and relevant through greater buzz, and to attract new and existing customers into the brand. To demonstrate the ‘social-savviness’ of IBM’s suite of business applications, we tapped into social trends and contradictions that have wider appeal: “People go to office to make money not friends. Yet this alone can’t get things done. Thus, colleagues need to be partners. There always needs to be a delicate dance of collaboration and competition. IBM’s suite of smart social applications and tools helps you do just this. It is personal, but only in a uniquely professional way.” This collision of values is the over-arching social tension in China. With this, the central theme for the campaign, the “parallel lines of friendship and competition”, was born. The core creative was an online film that told the story of two young and success-hungry salesmen climbing the corporate ladder, with Lotus features embedded in the storyline. It showcased the collision of values, emotions, greed and ambition and it highlighted the uncomfortable intersection of emotional relationships and rational personal goals. The film’s online micro-blog reach totaled 11,948,744 and viewers translated it into other languages like English and Korean. The popularity of the concept lead to IBM Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea and Brazil using it for their own business initiatives, and to other IBM business units requesting their own versions. New leads exceeded our target by 30%. Leads from existing customers showed an even bigger uplift of 271% from the original goal of $3 million, to a staggering $8.12 million. We not only exceeded our targets, but we also managed to attract more valuable leads and conversions for IBM. In 2012, the average value per lead was 37% higher than the average value in 2011, and significantly breaks away from a very flat trend. This is a great model for our future initiatives and testimony to the power of creativity to solve business problems.