Learning from Winners: How IBM Seized the Day

Great advertising captures and engages—often in ways we cannot exactly explain. On the wings of great campaigns, companies create whole new categories of products or services.

Learning from Winners: How IBM Seized the Day

Raymond PettitAdvertising Research Foundation

INTRODUCTION

After IBM embarked on its marketing transformation almost 15 years ago, the company's brand ranking leapt from 282 in 1994 to 3 in 2002 (Brandweek, 2002). Although many factors contributed to this success, the company undertook an agency-rationalization initiative that literally changed the way it does advertising and marketing. And that program played a pivotal role in turning IBM back into a successful marketing organization.

In the early '90s, when the largest technology boom in history was about to take off, IBM was struggling...

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