Company Challenge

Background

IBM is a big brand with only a small share of the Dutch midmarket. That’s partly because mid-size companies don’t consider IBM when they need IT solutions. Too big, too distant, too complex… they think. But IBM and its Business Partners can solve any challenge, big or small.

The challenge was to correct this misperception so business managers could see IBM as ta potential source of business solutions.

Idea

Businessmen aren’t interested in someone else’s problems. They are interested in their own. So, to get them to see how easily they could find solutions to their own specific challenges, a competition was set up using a medium that was relevant to the target audience, but unexpected. LinkedIn.

Using LinkedIn in this way was a first for Holland. To make the execution even more ‘social’, IBM’s own midmarket manager was the competition host. A real person offering real solutions.

In a video banner and then in an embedded video, he invited business people to submit their biggest business problem via their LinkedIn profile.

Then three IBM Business Partners, like Silverside, EIS, Qurius, Tectrade , offered their solutions. The visitor chose the best one to enter the competition to win €30,000 to help pay for implementation.

The challenges that were uploaded came from a great variety of organizations. From the Dutch Salvation Army, who wanted to improve collaboration among their soldiers, who are always on the road, to the international gay magazine ‘Winq’, who had to align processes after merging with the magazine ‘Mate’.

Next came the judging. Thousands of visitors voted on their favourite case. Now the viral effect kicked in as people asked friends to vote as well. Competitors began to advertise their cases. They even made short videos for their LinkedIn profiles in order to get more votes.

Results

IBM significantly boosted awareness amongst the midmarket target audience with over 3.5 million pageviews. Thousands of unique visitors watched the videos, entered the competition or judged cases with countless further LinkedIn connections watching their actions. Being the first to really take advantage of the possibilities of LinkedIn, IBM generated an exposure they wouldn’t have had with an ordinary campaign. Their market share grew by a staggering 13% proving IBM really can solve any challenge, including their own.

Our Thoughts

LinkedIn has been evolving rapidly in order to turn itself into a platform businesses and brands can use better and here’s evidence of that. Because of the sort of people who have their profiles on the networking site, this idea would have been a pretty efficient way of reaching the people IBM wanted to.

Beyond that, the mechanic of submitting a problem, getting three solutions to it, and then watching hundreds come and vote for which they thought best, was ingenious.