IBM strives towards a ‘Smarter Planet’. But how do you get this vision across? Making the world work better starts by thinking in an unrestricted way about new solutions. Letting your imagination run free. Like children do. We asked kids to come up with ideas to improve our lives. And we chose one: Aurora’s idea. She thinks it’s strange most drivers don’t stop at a zebra crossing. So she came up with the idea to make it light up when stepping on it. We realized this idea, captured people’s reactions and showed it to our target audience via online video, direct mail and targeted banners. The result? The online video was viewed over 100.000 times. Revenue grew by 6% in a market that shrunk by 8%. And the good news for Aurora: six major cities are talking to IBM about her idea.

IBM is all about innovation and progress. Not only through technique, but also with original thinking in an unrestricted way. Children are a good example for doing that. And if IBM can make their ideas work, they can make everything work. Furthermore IBM is all about progress for the future, which of course will be our children’s world. And last but not least: we wanted to show an emotional side of a brand that is very much seen as cold and technological by appealing to people’s hearts as well as their brains. In every way we succeeded.

To get it to the target audience, Aurora asked them to look at her idea in a personal way. We sent an eye-catching direct mail to a select group. We shot a separate video of Aurora, which we used for targeted banners. And we targeted the video directly via social media like Linkedin. The video was watched over 100,000 times. It inspired companies to share their ideas with IBM. The result? Revenue grew by 6% in a market that shrunk by 8%. And the good news for Aurora: six major cities are talking to IBM about her idea.