ad:tech New York: the digital strategies of IBM

Telling the IBM story
The idea of online "mini-mentaries" providing support for more traditional media is at play in a new Ogilvy effort for IBM. "IBM solves some of the world's toughest, most significant problems. And that's not something that's told easily in 30 seconds," Lazarus said. "Digital media is not constrained by pre-determined commercial lengths."
The IBM series includes work in support of the New York Police Department, pandemics, mapping DNA, and "Hollywood Comes to Galway," the tale of one-to-one entrepreneurial intelligence told on a global stage:

IBM's business of innovation now plays out on iTunes, in podcasts, and on YouTube. Some 23 million people have come to the IBM web site to hear the tales. "In the context of what you usually find on the web site of a technology company, it's refreshing," Lazarus said. "We're using story-telling in its most wonderful form."
Ogilvy, Lazarus continued, was the agency that was intuitive enough to use Craig's List (cost $0.00) when the client asked the agency to produce a series of newspaper and radio ads to support an anniversary ticket give-away of 45,000 free passes. The ticket supply was exhausted in just 45 minutes and the cost? $0.00. Almost as cost-efficient was a Hellman's mayonnaise "real food" consumer-centric series that appeared on Yahoo Food. "The program more than doubled sales coast to coast," Lazarus claimed, "and offered Unilever the highest ROI [250%] in its history."
And, of course, Ogilvy most likely will be globally famous forever for the $50,000 "Evolution" video it shot for Dove.
To date, more than 500 million viewers have witnessed the aging sequence that was inspired by a workshop for 12-year-old Canadian girls and became the first Cannes double-winner for film and interactive video.
"When he shot it, the creative director used his girlfriend," Lazarus said. "He told her, 'No one's going to see it. It's just going on the Internet.'
"They're not together anymore."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBr5clzbCYU