Every year, some 72,000 attendees descend on Barcelona from all over the world for the Mobile World Congress. The convention typically revolves around smartphones and other devices and the latest product launches from players like Samsung and Apple. Branded content lives in product demos or one-way advertising, and attendees are constantly bombarded by promotions and sponsorships that provide no utility or meaningful engagement. The conference is also an expensive event that is difficult to attend without corporate support. The combination of these factors — traditional product demos and advertising at the conference and the exclusive nature of the event — made IBM’s branded content, broadcast for audiences both in and outside Barcelona, truly innovative and powerful.

The creative execution was a “virtual newsroom,” that throughout the four-day conference, collected insights from conference events and pushed them out in the form of datagrams, videos, quotes and news on IBM’s MWC microsite as well as the IBM-branded LED kiosks at major bus stops around Barcelona. The microsite and kiosks also aggregated Tweets, Foursquare check-ins, event news, quotes and mobile trends around-the-clock. This was enabled by a Content Management System tool, which the agency created from scratch to operate as a publishing tool with built-in templates for real-time reporting across diverse channels.

The success of the initiative was clear in every channel. Traffic on ibm.com/mobilefirst doubled from before the event, with mobile units achieving an engagement rate of 82%. Ibm.com/mwc (the microsite), meanwhile, offered viewers enough meaningful content that average visit duration clocked 600% longer than that of ibm.com/mobilefirst. The datagrams were 400% successful as text-based content and doubled engagement for IBM mobile. And on Twitter, IBM surged in industry voice share, from 28% before the event to 67%, leaving HP, the next closest competitor, trailing at just 18%.