IBM - New Creators

Background

We’re entering an era where creativity is at the epicenter of business. IBM’s brand platform “Let’s create” was built to usher in this new era. An era where creativity applied to business is what will lead to the most competitive advantage for businesses.

We had already launched with an invitation to our audience to create. We had gotten them to give IBM a second look.

To further deepen and dimensionalize our new platform, we wanted to celebrate the “New Creators” and heroize the often overlooked but highly visionary leaders in the technology space.

The Brief

Make people reevaluate their own (limited) conceptions of what creativity really means.

Shining a long-overdue spotlight on the “New Creators,” the brilliant innovative minds who are leading their businesses (and thus society) in this new era of creativity in business.

Audience

Our audience is also our creative canvas. The “New Creators” are radical problem solvers. They…

  • Reimagine ways of working

  • Build new models

  • Get excited, not discouraged, by obstacles

  • Don’t let “how things are” get in the way of how they could be

Creative

How do you find New Creators? We asked IBMers to nominate them, putting out a call to every IBM office worldwide. We got hundreds of submissions, ranging from local technologists to IBM clients, to IBMers themselves.

So it made sense that we announce the New Creators at THINK is IBM’s annual thought-leadership conference. The 2022 event was IBM’s first one in-person since the start of the pandemic. It started in Boston and then went on tour to 22 global cities. The perfect place to showcase the new global creative class.

We did more than invite our audience to show up. CEO Arvind Krishna introduced the New Creators to the world during his keynote address. We brought them on stage.

Outside of THINK, we made movie trailers and posters that ran in the world’s most important newspapers—The New York Times, WSJ, Times of India, Le Monde—airports, train stations, and OOH around the globe.

We heroized, celebrated, and recognized New Creators’ unique abilities. And in return, they helped us show what’s possible when you create with IBM.

Check out a few of my favorite New Creators stories:

(Turn on Closed Captioning for English Subtitles for Alejandro. What can I say, I’m a strategist, not a video engineer)