WPP and IBM today announced IBM's AI and data platform Watsonx It is designed to reinvent the way B2B marketers identify and engage with customers and prospects throughout the buying process.
WPP Open for B2B helps marketers solve complex B2B marketing challenges, accurately identify and engage buying groups, and drive return on investment for their clients. Buying groups are made up of multiple stakeholders with different priorities who influence key purchasing decisions both within and outside of the organization, so delivering a consistent message over a long selling lifespan can be challenging. Traditionally, understanding how to align that message across the right channels to persuade buying groups to buy has been difficult, often leading to inefficiencies in marketing spend.
WPP Open for B2B is powered by watsonx, an AI and data platform designed to accelerate the impact of AI across businesses, bringing together the unique market-leading capabilities of both organisations. WPP and IBM have strategically aligned with LinkedIn to help brands gain a deeper understanding of buying groups to market more effectively and reach target buyers.
Alan Webber, program vice president for Digital Platform Ecosystems at analyst firm IDC, believes “this product and partnership has the potential to be a breakthrough for Fortune 1000 companies.”
Stephen Pretorius, chief technology officer at WPP, said: “Our clients want to reach the right people with the right message, on the right channel, at the right time. However, most solutions on the market today are designed for consumer marketing, targeting a single decision maker at a single point of purchase. WPP Open for B2B and our collaboration with IBM and LinkedIn will leverage the best of technology and expertise from WPP and IBM to help solve some of the most complex challenges in the B2B marketing space.”
“For years, B2B marketers have focused on delivering truly personalized, relevant and consistent experiences for large buying groups,” said Jonathan Adashek, senior vice president, marketing and communications, IBM. “Our collaboration with WPP and LinkedIn provides real-time, actionable insights based on trusted data. We're excited to develop and use these new powerful and trusted AI solutions to help empower B2B marketing.”
“To be successful in B2B, customers need to reach out to six to ten stakeholders, build relationships with them, and thenCollective Trust“Engagement across the buying group is key. We look forward to working with WPP and IBM to determine how our unique knowledge of the buying group can benefit WPP Open for B2B and help our clients run more effective advertising campaigns.”
With watsonx, WPP and IBM built out the platform's capabilities, including:
- AI-powered Buying Group Brain™ – a WPP AI model built in collaboration with IBM to more accurately identify target buying groups within B2B client accounts Watson It is trained on trusted data from clients and third parties through IBM watsonx.data, and it also teaches marketers how to deliver personalized, consistent experiences across channels and over the lifespan of long-term influencer campaigns.
- Orchestration and Optimization – Leverages insights from WPP's Buying Group Brain™ AI model to optimize buying group engagement and opportunity progression, including providing recommendations on channel mix and content to ensure buying groups experience consistent and relevant messaging. It also helps marketers track the effectiveness of marketing efforts with buying groups and adjust messaging and influencer targeting as needed.
- Chief Marketing Officer Command Center – An AI assistant that serves as a command center for the CMO, providing data and insights and connecting underlying systems to enable senior marketers to plan and model scenarios, predict outcomes, make more data-driven decisions, and take recommended actions.
These capabilities are supported by the IBM watsonx.governance toolkit, helping clients govern and transparently track the performance of their AI models.
Accelerating the transformation of marketing and communications using IBM's AI
IBM has already begun rolling out the new platform within its marketing and communications division. WPP's creative and technology expertise, along with the co-innovation of the Watsonx platform, is expected to support IBM's goal of accelerating growth through AI-driven marketing.
An open approach with built-in governance
WPP Open for B2B, powered by watsonx, combines the open capabilities of WPP Open, IBM watsonx and Red Hat OpenShift, designed to deliver enterprise scale, security, governance and easy integration into clients' existing systems.
IBM Consulting is the lead change management consulting partner for this solution, which includes using a collaborative engagement model to help clients customize and operationalize the platform, integrate it into their marketing workflows and build employee skills and adoption of the platform. IBM GarageIBM consultants can help you select and deploy the right AI models for the platform based on your requirements, including enterprise-grade models such as IBM Granite, open source or other third-party models.
