Ogilvy and IBM are about to end a 32-year relationship after the agency declined to participate in IBM’s upcoming creative agency review. The last campaign, Not Our AI Reality, developed by Ogilvy and the IBM Brand marketing team, goes for relatability, confronting the frustrations business leaders have when AI investments don’t live up to their promises. The campaign continues the brand’s Let’s Create Smarter Business platform.  

There are so many AI “solutions” out there for businesses. Most of them using fear of being left behind to sell, sell, sell. Business leaders are struggling with the gap between sky-high expectations and lacklustre real-world results. According to research from the IBM Institute for Business Value (IBV), 52% of leaders say AI adoption often fails to start with business challenges in mind, and only 30% of AI leaders report their CEOs are happy with AI returns.

The creative dramatises the familiar frustrations of AI – that “alternative reality” stories in which AI success comes at the cost of complexity, time and pressure to spend. Each leader’s fears are soothed when a colleague notes their actual reality, where IBM’s smarter approach is already in place.

The campaign underlines how IBM enables AI to run directly and seamlessly within existing environments, integrating diverse systems and strengthening current capabilities, and building ways for what’s working to finally scale across the entire company.

The campaign’s launch coincided with The Masters – another 30-year partnership. It is supported now across OOH and social media.