IBM was looking to establish itself as the leading adviser to financial services firms and needed their presence at Sibos to not only drive awareness and demand in this market, but also serve as a platform to demonstrate the impact and value of the IBM “Smarter Planet” agenda.More than promote solutions, the exhibit needed to showcase IBM data strategy in action with an experience design that engaged audiences, provided hands on access to content and lived up to the promise of Smarter Planet’s information sharing and resource optimizing capabilities.

Doing away with the traditional show and tell approach to trade show marketing, IBM worked with leading experts in education, psychology, and business to create an immersive high tech, high touch environment that audiences could navigate according to their need or level of interest.Access to a variety of multi media tools, such as touch screen technology, tablet PCs and QR codes integrated into the environment’s design, enabled on site subject matter experts to address audience questions, demonstrate solutions, and illustrate the power of information and exchange across multiple phases of the progressive conversations they had with attendees.

IBM’s immersive approach to learning yielded impressive depth of engagement and growth in captured attendee contacts representing significant follow-on nurture and revenue opportunity. Lead capture increased 78% year-over-year with the 2010 experience yielding more qualified visitor contacts than in 2008 and 2009 combined.

Sibos 2010 enabled IBM to create new intelligence gathering capabilities and metrics via the integrated technology and presentation environment - most notable of which was a 'content request shopping basket', which dynamically evolved IBM's eLiterature requests into a near real-time fulfillment and tracking system for sending content experienced on site to attendees' via their email accounts.