Category: IBM

Euro RSCG Is No. 2 on the Ad Age Agency A-List


This Old-School Network Figured Out How to Make Digital Work, and It Beat the Specialists at Their Own Game


By Rupal Parekh, Published: January 25, 2010

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — More than five years ago, Havas, the Paris-based parent of agency network Euro RSCG, announced the formation of Euro RSCG 4D, a unit to house the shop’s below-the-line digital, direct and promotion services under one roof. The move was meant to offer clients better-integrated marketing solutions, but soon after the unit was launched, Euro’s operations, especially in the U.S., began losing ground digitally to specialist shops.

“Unfortunately, we started paying too much attention to the articles about how clever we were and didn’t pay attention to actually staying at the forefront of digital,” admitted David Jones, global CEO of Havas Worldwide and Euro RSCG Worldwide. So the agency did two things: It got over itself and it brought 4D — with a renewed focus on building out digital expertise — back inside the broader shop, where it now appears to have cracked a code others haven’t.

In a surprise move in November, tech giant IBM moved digital-marketing responsibilities from Digitas to Euro RSCG. That capped a yearlong turn for Euro in North America during which it earned a reputation as a big, digital-savvy agency capable of beating pure players at their own game. (more…)

Information Week – Global CIO: IBM CEO Palmisano Challenges IT Industry Via Smarter Planet 2

Palmisano raises the bar for IT companies by pushing the intelligent potential of IT far beyond products and services.

By Bob Evans – January 13, 2010 01:00 PM

Whether you agree with his premise or think it’s just marketing hype, IBM CEO Sam Palmisano has successfully articulated a global vision that transcends IT products and services by focusing upon the power of intelligence in improving everything from people’s quality of life to business outcomes to policy decisions.

This is important because while we all talk about the potential of technology and how wonderful it will be when we can truly integrate business and technology, Palmisano’s Smarter Planet strategy goes beyond the talk phase and offers real, live examples of what can happen when we move past data and information and instead deal with intelligence; when we no longer have to infer but can truly know; and when we use the power of technology to inform and animate leadership and action. (more…)

Big Blue’s Smarter Marketing Playbook


January 12, 2010, 2:07pm By Steve Lohr

I.B.M. trotted out its “smarter planet” campaign more than a year ago, starting with a speech by Samuel J. Palmisano, I.B.M.’s chief executive, at the Council on Foreign Relations. At the time, the campaign seemed an ambitious, though potentially risky move. The vision of transportation, health care, cities, retailing, finance and other fields made more intelligent with digital technology — and yes, supplied largely by I.B.M. — could have easily fizzled and been portrayed as big-think puffery, out of step with an economy in a tailspin.

But I.B.M.’s gamble looks like good one today. The smarter-planet campaign has covered Big Blue in the mantle of thought and technology leadership among its core customers of senior corporate executives and government officials. It has also delivered new business, helping I.B.M. hold up better than most of its industry peers; its stock price is up 50 percent in the past year.

Mr. Palmisano delivered a speech on Wednesday — “Welcome to the Decade of Smart” — at London’s Chatham House, home of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, a policy think tank. Though not meant as a lessons-learned marketing tutorial, the talk is implicitly just that. (more…)