IBM serves up magical touch for China market

To many, the server - the cornerstone of ecommerce strategies - is a big block of steel, more foreboding than approachable. But changing this perception of the server helped IBM, the world's largest manufacturer of servers, crack the China market, where few business leaders understood the full potential of ecommerce. Despite having the best breed servers in the key growth segments - Unix and IT platforms - Big Blue encountered difficulties in turning mind share into market share. While IBM servers enjoyed moderate awareness, they feell short when it came to customer purchase decisions, unlike competing servers, which enjoyed strong mind share and consideration. Research also revaealed that "emotional reward" - one of factors of brand preference - was still unclaimed territory in the marketplace. Based on these insights, IBM's agency Ogilvy & Mather Beijing localised the worldwide Magic Box campaign for China. The agency incorporated a range of creative solutions to tackle the real marketing issue - IBM servers were not preferred and considered. Creative solutions were: - To make IBM's Magic Box the talk of the town and a new collective synonym for mainframe, NT, Unix and Vax servers. - To drive responses to the call centre inquiry hot line and IBM website for the next level of communication. - Drive people to the Web and provide an interactive information interface online to encourage consideration. - Deploy the most advanced Web design technoloy for banners and Web pages to intensify the magical image. - Sell the Magic Box concept to IBM server channels (distributor, reseller and solution providers) and encourage channels to stock server products. According to O&M Beijing group account director Billboard Kwok, the fully integrated campaign set up a revolutionary positioning for servers by injecting life and emotion into server values, a marketplace first. Demonstrating this positioning, the TVC posed the question, "What if there was a box/ Full of knowledge, insight, ideas, inventions, answers. It would be a magic box, a box of amazing powers ... IBM ebusiness servers are the magic box." "IBM had never positioned its servers as a family, so rather than have disparate campaigns, we unified the diferent products in an integrated campaign," said Mr Kwok. This approach, along with a unified communications mix, enabled IBM to dilute the higher share of voice enjoyed by its bigger-spending competitors, while establishing IBM as the server company. The impact of the Magic Box campaign, which won MEDIA's 1999 China Ad Campaign of the Year Award, was immediate: it generated millions of dollars in sales opportunities being the first image-with-a-hook IBM campaign that identified real business leads and tracked final sales. The projected increase in sales is expected to boost IBM server market shre by five to 10 per cent.

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