WPP and IBM today announced the launch of a new business to business (B2B) solution powered by IBM’s AI and data platform Watson. The solution is designed to reinvent how B2B marketers recognize and engage clients and potential clients across the buying journey. WPP Open for B2B aims to assist marketers in addressing intricate B2B marketing obstacles, precisely recognizing and interacting with purchasing groups, and improving clients’ ROI.
WPP Open for B2B is powered by watsonx, an AI and data platform, to expedite the integration of AI in businesses. It connects exclusive capabilities from both organizations to drive business impact. IBM is the first user of the platform to accelerate its AI-driven marketing and communications transformation.
WPP and IBM will strategically collaborate with LinkedIn to help brands better understand buying groups, market more effectively, and reach target buyers.
Buying groups are made up of multiple stakeholders with different priorities who influence key purchasing decisions both inside and outside of organizations, which can make it difficult to deliver a consistent message over a long sales period.
Traditionally, understanding how to adjust that message across the right channels to guide buying groups to purchase has been challenging and often leads to inefficient marketing spending.
Alan Webber, Program Vice President – Digital Platform Ecosystems at analyst firm IDC believes “this product and partnership have the potential to be an exponential force multiplier for the Fortune 1000.”
Stephan Pretorius, Chief Technology Officer at WPP, said: “Our clients want to get in front of the right people, at the right time, on the right channels, with the right message. However, most solutions in the market today are designed for consumer marketing, targeted at sole decision-makers at a single point of purchase. WPP Open for B2B, and our collaboration with IBM and LinkedIn, will help solve some incredibly complex challenges in the B2B marketing space, using the best of WPP and IBM technology and expertise.”
Jonathan Adashek, Senior Vice President of Marketing and Communications at IBM, said: “B2B marketers have been focused on creating truly personalized, relevant and consistent experiences for buying groups at scale for years. Our collaboration with WPP and LinkedIn provides real-time, actionable insights that are based on trusted data. We are excited to create and use these new, powerful and trusted AI solutions to deliver a force multiplier for B2B marketing.”
Penry Price, Vice President at LinkedIn, said: “With success in B2B requiring customers to reach between 6 to 10 stakeholders, building relationships and ‘collective confidence‘ among the entire buyer group is key. We are looking forward to working with WPP and IBM to determine how our unique knowledge of buyer groups can help inform WPP Open for B2B and help clients deliver more effective advertising campaigns.”
IBM has already begun deploying the new platform within its marketing and communications organization. WPP’s creative and technology expertise alongside the joint innovation on the watsonx platform is expected to support IBM’s objective to accelerate growth through AI-driven marketing.
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