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| IBM volunteers install solar panels in California. The Celebration of Service campaign rallied employees, clients, business partners, NGOs and nonprofits worldwide to give back to their communities. Photo courtesy of Ketchum |
Company: IBM
Agency: Ketchum
Timeframe: July 2010 - Dec. 2011
IBM has been a global technology leader for more than 100 years, making some of the biggest contributions and advancements to businesses, schools and communities worldwide. As the company began preparations for its landmark centennial anniversary, which took place in 2011, it wanted to celebrate in a style it felt was aligned with its business values and heritage.
Rather than simply celebrate with a corporate history book and press coverage, the company instead looked toward making a greater contribution. After several years of planning and a series of brainstorm meetings, the efforts resulted in a plan to launch one of the largest corporate volunteer efforts in history.
“As we were looking to celebrate our 100-year anniversary, we considered a variety of tactics and strategies, and knew that one piece of it would entail giving back to the community,” says Lisa Lanspery, manager of corporate communications, IBM.
The company designed its Celebration of Service program, which was a year-long initiative that allowed employees, clients, business partners (including Ketchum), retirees, NGOs and not-for-profit organizations to give back to communities worldwide.
“We had other programs that complemented this throughout the year—this was one piece of a much broader, overall campaign—but this was definitely the most visible and impactful,” says Lanspery.
CONNECTING VOLUNTEERS
The overarching plan was to design the Celebration of Service campaign so that it would allow volunteers to connect with local communities on various projects on a large scale, while stressing IBM as a brand and its values to the world.
Objectives included:
• Engage IBM’s 400,000-plus employees in volunteering time and knowledge to improving conditions in local communities, delivering approximately 1 million hours of service;
• Conduct service projects in majority of 170 countries in which IBM operates;
• Create hyper-local awareness of the IBM brand in the press to garner media coverage;
• Garner a majority of longer feature stories (versus brief media mentions) about IBM’s commitment to service.
Ketchum, already IBM’s agency of record, was brought in on the campaign during the planning stages, about six months prior to the January 2011 launch.
According to Esty Pujadas, partner, director of global technology practice and associate director of New York, Ketchum, 2011 was marked by a challenging news cycle. There was the Japan earthquake, the royal wedding and countless other happenings around the world that were all very important stories to be told.
“We faced a real challenge of how to keep the momentum going, from a social media and traditional media perspective,” says Pujadas. “It was the humanization aspect of the campaign and taking this hyper-local approach to tell those individual stories and really tying them back to the communities that worked.”
Pujada stresses that Celebration of Service wasn’t a one-off CSR project; it was a celebration of volunteerism and of what technology offers a community—and how IBM, as a business, through its innovations and technology and its people, is able to do that around the world.
ORGANIZATIONAL SKILL
The size and scope of such an ambitious effort could have potentially become a huge challenge, but organization in this case was key.
“Thank goodness we’re a technology company,” says Lanspery. “We understand analytics. Building the platform was one of the challenges, but once we actually got it in place it worked nicely. We built the platform, organized, assessed and rallied all of these people.”
With a strategy in place, some of the guiding principles of the campaign were:
• Keep the approach local: Enable the IBM team to work on projects meaningful to them in their own communities, while making events media-friendly for local reporters and photographers.
• Amplify the message: Leverage existing media relationships of partner organizations (e.g., United Nations, Points of Light Institute, Habitat for Humanity), IBM relationships with local influencers (such as elected officials) in the cities and towns where IBM does business, and through IBM’s extensive social media channels.
By January 2011, the one-year initiative was under way, with volunteers/participants in 120 countries. Some of the key components included:
â–¶ Web Site —Celebration of Service drove engagement through a highly visible Service Pledge on the IBM Centennial Web site that constantly updated total hours pledged; Activity Kits in seven languages offering “grab-and-go” volunteer ideas; detailed Service Leader training modules; and grants to support volunteer activities.
â–¶ Guidebooks —A Global Communications Guidebook supported local IBM communications teams; an NGO Communications Guidebook helped NGOs amplify their partnerships and work with IBM through communications channels and social media.
â–¶ Social Media —Instructions on how to use social networks to promote service activities were featured prominently. IBM created unique hashtags to track conversations on Twitter.
WIDE SCOPE
Celebration of Service rapidly became the largest corporate service activity in IBM’s history, impacting local communities in 120 countries. Projects ranged from IBM’s then-CEO Sam Palmisano teaching Baltimore middle school students about the importance of math and science, to volunteers in Uruguay mentoring youth from impoverished neighborhoods in finding their first jobs, to IBM employees in New Zealand teaching senior citizens how to send text messages.
“Many of these projects were highly visual, so they were compelling for the local media,” says Karen Flanagan, VP and account director, Ketchum. “For example, volunteers installing solar panels in low-income houses in California (see photo) or showing supercomputer Watson to children in a classroom definitely helped tell the stories to the press.”
By the time the campaign neared its final stages in December 2011, it had produced some remarkable results:
• Engaged IBM’s workforce and more than 10,000 other participants in millions of hours of service, completing projects in 120 countries (see infographic).
• Ten cities issued proclamations honoring IBM’s volunteerism in their communities.
• More than 1,000 articles generated in local, business and mainstream media, online sites and blogs (from local to mainstream media, including USA Toda y and Huffington Post to Patch.com) as well as coverage outside the U.S.
• Majority of coverage referenced IBM’s commitment to service; almost all were feature stories.
• IBM gained eight points in brand value in the annual Interbrand Most Valuable Global Brand study while maintaining the No. 2 spot.
• On the official IBM Centennial Day of Service (the June 15, 2011) alone, Celebration of Service was discussed in #CoS-tagged tweets and more than a thousand tweets tagged #IBM. More than 1,500 photos of service projects were uploaded to ibm100.com
EXTENDED NEWS CYCLE
“We had a story or a blog or something in a local paper all year long,” says Pujadas. “There were so many different facets to this, and the fact that momentum continued over such a length of time with a fairly aggressive news cycle going on, speaks volumes about this campaign.”
Pujadas says that looking back, the approach and strategy worked well and produced, for her, outstanding results. However, she adds, “The social media landscape is ever changing, so there are new things that are now available that we wish were more prominent then. They could have also been good opportunities for us.”
Pujadas stresses that Ketchum’s 15-plus year partnership with IBM was critical in the program’s success. Also, she attributes the humanization of the campaign itself as a cornerstone. According to Pujadas, it’s just a great story about how humanity, technology and volunteering came together to give back to communities around the world. PRN
CONTACT:
Esty Pujadas, [email protected]; Karen Flanagan, [email protected]; Lisa Lanspery, [email protected].