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.
