IBMblr
Week one, Ogilvy. They’d just brought my butt over from Amsterdam and gave me a small project to start off. Tiny brief, tiny budget. For the 20th year in a row, it was announced that IBM were the most innovative company in the world with the most patents. With only two weeks from concept to development, Sam Mazur (my creative director partner in crime, genius copywriter) and I had to figure out how to celebrate this in a humble way.
In 30 days we had 15 million views, went on to win every sort of door stopper (like a bunch of Cannes Lions, Webbys, One Show trophies and ECHOS), had IBM in the top 5 of the world's corporate blogs and were delighted to play a part in the naming of Ogilvy & Mather as B2B advertising agency of the year by AdAge.
We did this by creating a Tumblr for IBM, IBMblr, showcasing what really happens behind the big blue curtain. The strong, prolific, giant, 100+ year old brand was for the first time revealing the details of exactly how they do it all. From failures to inspirations, inventor's insights to moving atoms. In two weeks the project was off the ground revolutionizing how content could be shared by a B2B brand—with illustrations, posters, videos... and a lot of GIFs.
IBM have 400,000+ employees. People who live and love what they do and every day change the world. We interviewed everyone from master inventors to IBM Fellows to prolific women in tech and turned all of this into stuff that would inspire you while you’re having a scroll on your phone.
From late nights of me quickly writing shitty HTML and CSS so the site would work, to draft upon draft crafted by Sam with no time, to managing incredibly illustrators, animators and IBM geniuses, IBMblr kept growing and growing to something us and the internet loved.
We took on big projects by IBM throughout the IBMblr project, like our kick off project, which showed patents in a whole new way. We collaborated with friends of Ogilvy and IBM around the world to design 20 posters for 20 IBM patents.
As a self-confessed internet lover with no patience, the approach to video was influenced by this and how we now consume. Instead of traditional long form videos, we released a series of bite-sized videos called 'Big Brains, Small Films'.
Recognition