WPP and IBM Revolutionize B2B Marketing with AI
WPP (NYSE: WPP) and IBM (NYSE: IBM) have teamed up to offer a new business-to-business (B2B) solution powered by IBM AI and the data platform, Watson. This new offering aims to change how B2B marketers and customer interactions are identified and interacted with by prospects throughout the purchase journey.
Called WPP Open for B2B, the solution addresses the complex challenges of B2B marketing by helping marketers accurately identify and engage buying groups. These teams have multiple stakeholders with different priorities, which makes it difficult to deliver a consistent message over a long sales cycle. Traditionally, adapting messaging to better strategies for guiding buying groups to a purchase decision has been challenging, often resulting in poor marketing spend
Leveraging IBM’s watsonx platform, WPP Open for B2B combines the proprietary capabilities of the two companies. This includes a plan to collaborate with LinkedIn to give brands a deeper understanding of buying groups, enabling more effective and targeted marketing
Alan Weber, Vice President of Programs—Digital Platform Ecosystems at IDC, highlighted the potential of this partnership, saying, “This product and partnership has enough upside potential for the Fortune 1000.”
Stephen Pretorius, WPP’s chief technology officer, highlighted the unique benefits of the solution. He said, “Our customers want to get in front of the right people, at the right time, in the right channels, with the right message. But most of the solutions on the market today are designed for consumer marketing.”, aiming for one decision- WPP.” Open to B2B at a time of purchase.” It uses the best technology and know-how to solve some incredibly complex challenges in B2B marketing.
Jonathan Adashek, vice president of marketing communications at IBM, added, “B2B marketers have focused for years on creating truly personalized, relevant and consistent experiences for buying groups at scale.” are We excited to build and deploy this powerful new AI solution.”
Penry Price, vice president of LinkedIn, noted the importance of building relationships in buying groups, “Success in B2B requires customers to reach 6 to 10 stakeholders, and relationships are actual trust.” Building’ building across the entire consumer community is key.”
WPP and IBM have developed several key capabilities for the platform using Watsonx, e.g.
- AI-Driven Buying Group Brain™: This WPP AI prototype, developed using IBM watsonx.ai, accurately identifies target buying groups in B2B client accounts. Through IBM watsonx.data, consumers and third parties are trained on reliable data, helping marketers deliver personalized and consistent experiences across channels over long campaigns
- Orchestration and Optimization: Insights from WPP’s Buying Group Brain™ AI model is being used to optimize engagement and opportunity development for buying groups. It provides channel mix and content recommendations to ensure cohesive, consistent and relevant messaging, as well as helping marketers track the progress of their marketing activities and adjust messaging as needed
- Chief Marketing Officer Command Center: This AI assistant acts as a command center for Chief Marketing Officers, providing data and insights, integrating underlying systems, enabling marketing executives to plan, model situations internally, predicting outcomes, making data-driven decisions, recommending and executing actions.
This capability is supported by the IBM watsonx.governance toolkit, which helps customers manage and transparently manage the performance of AI instances.
IBM has already begun implementing the new platform in its marketing and communications organization. The collaboration with WPP on the watsonx platform is expected to accelerate IBM’s growth through AI-driven marketing.
Designed for greater collaboration, security, governance, and easy integration, WPP Open for B2B powered by watsonx combines the open capabilities of WPP Open, IBM watsonx, and Red Hat OpenShift IBM Consulting acts as a change management consulting partner specifically, helping clients optimize and operate the platform, it’s in marketing workflows Integrates and builds employee expertise through the IBM Garage engagement model
For more information about WPP, visit (https://www.wpp.com). IBM is a leader in hybrid cloud, AI, and advisors, serving clients around the world and providing digital transformation with a commitment to trust, transparency, accountability, integration and service
