6 Lessons Learned from IBM’s Smart Planet Marketing Campaign

The planet is becoming smarter … intelligence is being infused into systems that enable services to be delivered. An awesome quote from Sam Palmisano. It was in late 2008 or early 2009 when IBM began its “Smarter Planet” marketing campaign. At the time, the campaign seemed very ambitious … maybe even a bit risky, even for IBM. The vision of healthcare, retail, finance, transportation, cities, and other fields made more intelligent and therefore better with digital technology could have been viewed as puffery. Not what happened to the smart planet.

But IBM has stuck to its strategy and the Smart Planet campaign looks like a good one from this view today.

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Here are my takeaways on what other businesses can learn from this strategy:

Smart planet

Pick a current challenge in your community that relates to your brand/business in a relevant way. Look for market rifts that you could use. Create your vision around what you can contribute to your community.

Build out a long-term campaign

Find a theme around your vision. Use the theme to craft a marketing strategy connecting and integrating as many smaller marketing objectives and tactics as you can.

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Smart planet marketing campaign

Link your core competencies to your vision and the challenge.

Don’t overpromise … you must deliver exactly what you promise or the results will be worse than not executing the strategy.

Always plan out … short-term wins in advance.

Use the campaign … to convert good customers into advocates. Define a tactic to achieve this objective specifically.

In the end, your strategy should tell your story in a way that builds on your brand image and integrates all of your marketing efforts.