>> Narrator: From theCUBE's studios in Palo Alto in Boston,
connecting with thought leaders all around the world,
this is a CUBE Conversation.
>> Hi and welcome to a special CUBE Conversation,
I'm Stu Miniman and happy to welcome back to the program,
Michelle Peluso.
She is the Senior Vice President of Digital Sales
as well as the Chief Marketing Officer for IBM.
Michelle, thanks so much for joining us.
>> Hey Stu, great to see you again.
Boy we had fun at Think, thank you so much for your help.
>> Yeah, well Michelle, I'm really excited to, you know,
get a little bit of the inside what happened from your end.
Got to talk to you, you know, at the show,
instead of 20,000 people, you know,
dealing with San Francisco and Moscone and everything there.
You had, if I read right, 100,000 people at least
registered for the digital event,
you know, bring us inside a little bit the control center,
what was it like being part of that event,
your team, of course, all distributed,
and you know, anything surprise you during that event,
>> Well it was nerve racking.
(laughing)
Look, what an exciting thing,
and kudos to the team for so much innovation.
I mean, we had in 60 days to build a platform.
Of course, using IBM technology, lots of media,
the IBM Cloud, integrate some third parties,
build a reporting suite.
We make all of the content because in this world,
of course, there are different things front and center
on our clients minds, and not only that,
but we had to film it all in remote locations
in peoples homes, and make it all work,
and so the team did an extraordinary job,
and on the really positive side,
you mentioned we had over 100,000 clients
and business partners register,
but it was still even more
than three times any audience we've ever had
come to our physical events at Think.
So it was really extraordinary,
and now of course, we're following up.
We have a treasure trove of information
about what clients are interested in,
and what our business partners are interested in.
We have a great opportunity
to leverage the on demand content
to continue the conversation.
>> It's great.
It's really interesting to time shift things instead of okay
I'm going to dedicate however many days to do the event.
Now, I love that mix of you can watch it live,
you can watch it on demand, you can follow up.
You know, how are you any trends that you're seeing
as to where people are going,
or how you're making sure that there are people to support
and engage, not just say, you know, hey,
here's a lot of content, you know, go watch our breakouts,
go watch the cube stuff.
>> Yeah, yeah.
Well this is a huge thing, right?
So both in terms of what we actually had to say,
we really took our time to say,
we interviewed clients, we look at search,
you know, what's happening,
what are our clients searching for, and PaaS data.
So our big seven conversations,
things like supply chain resiliency,
things like engaging customers virtually,
things like virtual work and return to work.
We knew that those were really pertinent conversations,
and now we have, you know, a couple things happening.
One, all of our sellers are reaching out to people.
Their clients, their business partners to talk about
what they liked, what they didn't like,
where they had to go deep in that conversation to progress,
that conversation.
For those that maybe registered and didn't attend,
we're sending them on demand sessions
based on what they said they were interested in,
so they can consume at their own pace, and for many,
we know that there are real opportunities that have emerged.
So real business opportunity if they want IBM's help with,
and there, of course, we're accelerating the conversations
with those clients.
>> Yeah, Michelle, your team actually sent over
a few questions that some of the audience gave,
and one of them talked about that there is,
you know, no shortage of data out there.
But what they put in the question
is often there's not enough people that can curate
or help you sort through.
So you know, I think with the digital experience, right?
How are you helping people curate the information?
How are you making sure that people get from,
you know, the data down that path towards you know,
knowledge and you know, turn data into results eventually.
>> It's horrible, you have to ask good questions, you know?
There's got to be great data standards, and governance,
and you have to ask good questions,
and that's really the simple thing.
And you know, for us, we can ask some very simple questions.
What are the signals we have
on some clients that tend to think that they're interested
in going deeper?
You know, the clients where, you know,
we had maybe 20, 30, 40 attendees.
We had some clients attend over 1,000 sessions,
and you know, really, maybe they're majoring on AI,
or maybe they majored on cloud,
and so how do we pair up our our sellers,
our client execs with those clients to talk about
taking that conversation to the next phase, right?
To the next opportunity.
Maybe doing demos, maybe doing a virtual garage, et cetera.
Secondly, we had a lot of clients actually sign up
for things like virtual garages,
throughout Think there were these calls to action,
and so we had many clients say, "Hey, I want to start
"a virtual garage. I'll take advantage of that to our
"free consulting."
So for them, we know that we've got to go down
a very specific path very quickly.
And then there are other clients where the data said
you know, there's a late, maybe a little bit of interest,
but we have to nurture that they're not ready
for the next step.
So I think it always starts
with just asking great questions.
We're a very data driven organization in IBM marketing.
We're really passionate about what we can learn.
And, you know, beyond, of course,
the data and things like Think we're passionate
about things like Net Promoter Score.
We get a million data points every year from our clients
about how they're feeling about IBM.
So all this enriches our ability to make sense of this world
for our clients.
>> Yeah, so Michelle, what one of the things
I found really interesting is we've had online events
for quite a long time now.
You know, we've worked with IBM on that hybrid model,
in physical and online events before,
but there's a real thirst for you know,
what are best practices now?
What can you learn?
So, you know, when your peers are reaching out for you,
and saying, "Hey, Michelle, you did this."
Other than not trying to do it all in from you know,
from start to finish in six weeks,
what other tips would you give,
or lessons learned that you have?
>> Well, I think, first of all,
the platform makes a huge decision, right?
We really have to have a flawless technical experience.
And so we were very lucky to have lots of media
and hosting on the IBM Cloud.
But we integrated some really good third party tooling
before you know, analytics, real time analytics,
and things like chat, et cetera.
Secondly, I think you really have to think about
how to make this engaging for the audience.
It can't feel like a streaming event.
And so for us that meant things like chat of course,
then things like moderated live expert sessions
mean things like going off platforms,
Reddit and hosting sessions on Reddit,
things like one on one client executive briefing room.
So the second part is really about engaging the audience,
and making sure it doesn't just feel like streaming third,
shorter is better.
You know, people's attention spans are small
and no one can sit for five or six hours
in front of a computer and consume.
So we really cut down and tightened up our key messages.
That I think was critical.
I think the mix of live and on demand was really powerful
and something to think about,
but the last thing I would say is that how you progress
and follow up on that interest,
we all know how to do it in the event.
You know, you sit down with your client,
and you just watch today in sessions, you have a beer,
you're probably watching some 80's band play,
and you're talking about what you like,
what you think what's exciting to you.
What are your challenges?
In a digital world that's harder for our client reps
and our sellers, and so really thinking of the onset,
and how do we make sure we create the space
for those conversations after the event is critical.
>> Great.
Well, Michelle,
so where do you and the IBM team take all those learnings?
You know, engagement absolutely critical as you talked?
What What should we expect to be seeing from IBM
through the rest of 2020 when it comes to digital apps?
>> I think we'll do things really differently
from here on out.
I mean, I think that, you know,
of course we'll go back to live physical experiences
at some point when it's safe for all of us.
It is in certain parts of the world already,
but we have a series of Think summits coming up
all around the world,
that idea that you can really engage bigger audiences,
we can give them time to make the most of this.
They don't have to spend money flying somewhere
to really go deep.
That's exciting to me.
I think we've learned so much.
So stay tuned for the Think regional summits
happening all around the world,
and and I hope we continue to innovate
and bring the best of physical and digital into a new brand
of experiences and events.
>> Yeah, it's really fascinating stuff, Michelle, right?
Not only do you get to reach a global audience,
but you have the opportunity to personalize things
a little bit more.
>> Yeah.
>> So, thank you so much for joining us.
Definitely... >> It's always great
to see you. >> Hope to see more
and more on the summit's going forward.
>> Terrific, always great to see you,
and always thank you for your partnership.
>> All right.
Thank you for watching.
I'm Stu Miniman, and as always,
thank you for watching theCUBE.
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