IBM’s activity around the 2016 Oscars – which spanned a pair of commercials and real-time robot tweets – introduces its leading edge Watson artificial intelligence through a ‘cognitive era’ campaign.
During the award ceremony telecast ad breaks, IBM ran two spots (one spoof and one serious) featuring Carrie Fisher and Ridley Scott.
The latter is a slightly more serious, ethical ad discussion about the future and AI between IBM’s Watson and Sir Ridley Scott – the sci-fi movie director of Alien and Blade Runner.
While the former is a spoof spot , ‘Coping With Humans’, which sees the Star Wars actor counselling obsolete robots who struggle with the idea of working human beings.
The message is, unlike this support group of battered bots, IBM’s Watson works with humans to outthink competitors, challenges, limits.
Part of the extended digital campaign, IBM has also posted a further 10 individual bot one-on-one session spots with Fisher in which they discuss their own uselessness.
For example, sarcastic Sinister Bot (voiced by Steve Buscemi) regrets its inability to communicate using sign language (and hints at Watson’s understanding of context and nuance in seven languages).
While Duster Bot doesn’t realize how dated its manual smog ‘solution’ really is,
Gadget Bot is stuck on pre-Google Maps geography,
and Trendy Bot simply doesn’t quite live up to its name.
Another real-time robotic strand of the campaign sees four of these bots tweet from their own Twitter handles during the Academy Awards themselves – thus providing live Oscars commentary under the #Oscars and IBM’s #CognitiveEra hashtags.
Fisher, other influencers and the IBM Watson handle interacted with the bots on Twitter tot.
Follow #RobotsReact tonight for more #Oscars commentary. https://t.co/1ZjrVtHCLZ
— IBM (@IBM) February 29, 2016
Want to analyze the tone of the winning screenplay? Check out Tone Analyzer: https://t.co/kIoozyGONo #Oscars #RobotsReact
— IBM Watson (@IBMWatson) February 29, 2016
The campaign, created in harness with agency Ogilvy & Mather, New York, are the spearhead of an IBM campaign that aims to reintroduce its cognitive business unit to a broader audience – following its initial October 2015 launch.
The creative drives viewers online to a campaign landing page and a set of related videos, Watson apps and demonstrations of its specific capabilities.
‘Watson is doing lots of things in many different industries,’ explains Ann Rubin, IBM VP of branded content and global creative.
‘his goes well beyond things you’ve seen before, from helping oncologists make good choices to assisting educators in the classroom—helping vets handle pet health, empowering financial planners to make better decisions, etc.’
Comment
The vanguard of this campaign launched during the Australian Open in January when Serena Williams worked with IBM Watson on activating the tech giant’s sponsorship rights at the tournament (see case study).
But at The Oscars, IBM is taking two distinctly different tactical approaches to the subject.
The Fisher spoof uses nerdy humour to illustrate a real business challenge – specifically how people and cognitive computing services will learn how to interact.
This entertainment-led approach probably fits in more neatly with the Oscars as an entertainment property than the more serious, Ted-like Ridley Scott talk.
While both ambassadors are film professionals, by featuring Star Wars actress Fisher it links to the 2016 Oscars specifically as a property (after all, Star Wars might not scoop many statuettes, but it is the biggest film of the year).
IBM’s Rubin emphasises that film fans don’t have to visit ‘a galaxy far far away’ to see the real-world implications of AI.
‘People have a fascination with sci-fi movies, but those are viewed through the creative lens of Hollywood; what’s real is what Watson is doing,’ she adds.
‘[The Academy Awards] are a good venue to help millions of people watching understand, clearly and simply, what Watson can do. The sci-fi lens demystifies the technology and shows how it’s changing our lives.’
The creative is fairly good. But ‘Ex Machina’ is aint!
Links
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Academy/Oscars Homepage:
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