Cannes Lions
OGILVY BEIJING, Beijing / IBM / 2012
Overview
Entries
Credits
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.
Outcome
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.
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