Situation: Artificial Intelligence is a competitive category. Every tech company and consultancy from Amazon to Accenture have something to say, and something to sell, overcrowding the space. What could we do to make IBM relevant to audiences that have limited AI understanding?

Brief: IBM wanted to create an opportunity to demonstrate its own AI technology in an easy-to-understand way. No algorithms. No tech speak. No complexity for the sake of it.

Objectives:

1. Increase familiarity and relevancy of IBM’s AI.

2. Open doors to prospects, in the first instance to elite football clubs.? ?

In the massively competitive world of football, could IBM’s AI help a team to raise their game? To prove it could, we developed cutting-edge analytics, usually the preserve of premier league clubs, for semi-professional Leatherhead FC in the 7th tier of English football. Then we made a documentary series that followed their journey.

We needed to reach business decision-makers in their personal lives, and engage them as sports fans, by creating an experience that would carry over to influence their perceptions of IBM at work.

We decided the best way to do this would be by finding a struggling grassroots football club, firstly because the technology hasn’t been used in football before. And secondly, because if IBM’s AI could help a team like Leatherhead, this would prove that it could help any business team raise their game.

AI is a very complex field. We wanted to show that IBM’s AI can work for any business model by demonstrating how it can work in practice.?

In this case, demonstration was key because we knew this would help the audience understand the benefits of AI.?

IBM’s AI analysed data based on film footage by match - set pieces, possession, pass types, and formation, providing insights for the team to help them raise their game. Also, forthcoming matches were planned using insights from unstructured data - reports and social media about the opposition.?

Natural language processing made communication easy – we taught it everyday football terminology to recall intelligent analytics. This meant that managers and players with limited technical ability could easily recall video footage and relevant insights and inform tactics for upcoming games.

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We launched on the 30th April 2019, and we were off paid media by 1st July’2019.?

The campaign followed an arc from reaching the audience in a personal mindset as football fans to a business mindset:

The first part consisted of trailers, banners, social, search and PR. These drove to the landing page, which featured a five-episode documentary, showcasing Leatherhead FC’s journey with IBM - not like a traditional B2B case study, but keeping it as human as possible by focussing on individual perspectives at the club.

We supported these with further videos that targeted our audience once they were in their business mindsets, by demonstrating how IBM’s technology works, and how it can help your business.

Leatherhead rose 13 places, avoiding relegation, and made headlines all over the world.

The documentary series got 11M views vs a KPI of 3.6M

Landing page engagements increased by 28% vs IBM benchmark of 10%.

Familiarity with IBM’s AI capability increased by 33%.

Relevancy to business increased by 36%.

IBM was contracted to support the women’s world cup.?

And presently, they are in discussion with two premier league clubs.

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