Line drawing of a person in profile wearing glasses and a teal shirt, with two purple squares floating beside them on a light blue background.Minimal line drawing of a person in profile with short hair and glasses, wearing a teal shirt, on a light blue background with two purple squares.

IBMSmart storage for Wize Guys

Service
  1. Advertising and media activation
Industry
  1. Technology

For a campaign to raise awareness of its Storwize product line, IBM encouraged us to push boundaries. We built a bold thought leadership content stream around a group of savvy technology influencers we called the Wize Guys.

Challenge

The role of data in our lives is pervasive, and it’s having a profound impact on strategic decisions about how it’s collected, stored and shared.

Our goal was to position IBM’s storage solutions as the most natural and flexible option for addressing these data challenges. Storage is a technical category where product messaging can easily get lost, so IBM wanted to get tech out of its comfort zone – to be original, out of the box and inspiring, while driving thought leadership through social channels.

Our challenge was to bridge the gap between product and thought leadership, with content that data decision makers would actually want to see.

Insight

Data decision-makers don’t just need product information – they need insights and wisdom to guide the big strategic calls. And the voices they trust most are those of the experts.

So rather than lead with the product, we set out to connect our audience to that wisdom directly, through a group of technology influencers who were already shaping the conversation around data. Wisdom from the experts, in the form of The Wize Guys.

By building on a theme that will remain relevant for the foreseeable future, this approach let IBM own a critical place in conversation, while playfully positioning its storage solutions as the “wize” choice.

Solution

We created a visual look and feel for Wize Guys content – primarily videos, blogs and social tiles – that reflected the premium nature of the products and complemented IBM’s brand guidelines. This included a single-line drawing of each influencer to elevate their profile and make all assets recognisable.

After interviewing prospective Wize Guys and getting a feel for their most telling opinions around data, we refined their thoughts to guide the content. All assets were shared across LinkedIn, YouTube and Twitter via IBM accounts and the Wize Guys’ own profiles.

In just one month, the campaign had clocked 7.1 million impressions, a reach of 3 million and engagement 10 times higher than the average for influencer campaigns. We even had other technology influencers clamouring to join the Wize Guys team.

Illustrations by Pascale Guillou

It was and continues to be a very rewarding partnership working with The Frameworks. Delighted to have the team rising to the challenge of getting tech out of its comfort zone and be both original, out of the box and inspiring at the same time, while driving excellent thought leadership through social channels. Onwards and upwards!

Mihaela Stoian, Content Strategy Leader, IBM Europe
Black-and-white portrait of a bald man with a short gray beard, wearing a dark blazer over a white collared shirt, lit from the side against a plain gray background.
A MacBook Pro laptop on a light blue background displays an IBM webpage titled “The Wize Guys: Wisdom for a Data-Driven World,” with a hero illustration, buttons, and four video thumbnails about data and technology.
White text Meet the Wize Guys above five line-drawn portraits of older adults in colorful collared clothing on a blue background.

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