H W13109 IBM’S DIGITAL INFLUENCE PROGRAM .docx

H
W13109
IBM’S DIGITAL INFLUENCE PROGRAM
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Copyright © 2013, Richard Ivey School of Business Foundation
Version: 2013-04-16
In the first week of August 2011, Sumita Bajaj, director of
Marketing and Communications, IBM India,
was reassessing the growth and development of the Digital
Influence program, which had been
conceptualized in the fall of 2009. The project’s aim was to use
social media to increase the share of voice
and reach of IBM’s five software brands (Rational, WebSphere,
Tivoli, Lotus and Information
Management). In the past year, planned and concentrated work
had shown positive results. Now, the
challenge was to engineer sustainability into the approach. On
August 16, 2011, in dialogue with
Roshni Sengupta, Digital Strategy and Marketing manager, IBM
Software Group, India/South Asia, (see
Exhibit 1), Bajaj asserted that IBM’s achievements, though
commendable in such a short time, were not
unexpected. However, the objectives of the digital influence
strategy—an increase in brand perception
and the creation of technology evangelists— remained to be
achieved.
The Digital Influence program had been launched in February
2010, after almost eight months of
planning. Seventy-five software subject matter experts (SMEs)
were selected to help the firm achieve its
desired objectives. Within a year, in 2011, share of reach for all
the brands had improved substantially.
Lotus had the maximum rate of increase at 1,933 per cent,
followed by Information Management (IM)
with 421.8 per cent. Although the percentage increase was as
per the projections, Bajaj was hesitant about

declaring victory at this point.Was the model sustainable? What
challenges did IBM face in the
implementation process? Would the current plan of operations
help IBM gain market space and create
technical evangelists?
BEGINNING AND CONCEPTUALIZING
IBM India had planned for the Rational Software Conference1
to take place in August 2009. It was
expected that 7,000 chief information officers (CIOs) and their
team members would attend. In June, the
marketing group met to organize and address issues related to
social media for the conference. Bajaj was
worried that the plans did not project a 360-degree
communication with the stakeholders. She instructed
Sengupta to call off some of the activities for the conference,
namely those related to social media
1The name of the conference was changed to “Innovate” in
2010.
For the exclusive use of T. Nguyen, 2016.
This document is authorized for use only by Tifany Nguyen in
Interactive Marketing taught by Yuli Zhang, Drexel University
from June 2016 to September 2016.
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influence. With the event barely a couple of months away, all
preparations were started fresh with new

inputs to influence the target audience. Bajaj emphatically
asserted to the marketing team:
I will not be able to spend the kind of dollars on branding IBM
software that we spent on
branding Smarter Planet.2 So how do you build a marketing mix
that supports driving increased
mindshare about IBM software without running out of money or
contradicting the bigger IBM
vision, that is, Smarter Planet and reaching IBM’s target
audience?
IBM had been experimenting with the application of social
media in the business and marketing context
by creating Facebook pages, Twitter profiles and YouTube
videos. The intent was to use social media as a
vehicle to extend the marketing mix. In July 2009, after
studying the existing marketing plans, Bajaj
instructed her team to shut down all ad hoc sites created by
different IBM teams. Voicing the reasoning
behind the decision, she stated, “I’d rather not be on Facebook
than have five people following me.” In
September 2009, she met with the team to discuss and
conceptualize an integrated plan for social media.
Toward the last quarter of 2009, two main objectives were
envisioned for the initiative: (1) to understand
the brand perception of IBM’s five software brands among the
target audience and (2) to ensure the
creation and visibility of chief technical evangelists3 in
professional networks.
To expedite the process, IBM hired Ogilvy and Mather (O&M)
in February 2010 to help rethink the

social media strategy in a well-defined timeline and create mind
space among consumers through digital
listening and influence (see Exhibit 2). O&M completed the
first round of assessment by October 2010.
By December 2010, IBM was ready with a social media
aggregator that aimed to aggregate the entire
brand and create an integrated view of all the conversations.
DIGITAL DIALOGUE
Blogging4 gained ground in 2005, changing the way individuals
and companies positioned themselves
and their products. The personal focus in blogs secured a
favourable response from consumers and future
customers. It gave them an opportunity to voice their
appreciation and grievances, which were almost
immediately addressed. However, with this changing trend,
bloggers’ focus shifted from blogging as a
hobby to blogging as a means of earning money. Companies
began hiring external experts to post
information on their products and promote technical
evangelism. But, with the passage of time, the
companies that were trying to promote technical evangelism
faced a slackening of effort, according to
Rohit Sajnani, a 32-year-old blogger, who had actively pursued
blogging as a hobby for years before he
joined IBM. He continued, “The trend I have noticed is that
people start with articles, publish them
weekly, or monthly, and then after sometime they stop
publishing.” He regarded this irregularity among
2 Smarter Planet was a corporate initiative of IBM that
highlighted the strategies to be followed for creating a planet
that is

“instrumented, interconnected and intelligent.” IBM, “What Is a
Smarter Planet,”
www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/in/en/overview/ideas/index.html?re
=sph, accessed November 2, 2012.
3A chief technical evangelist referred to a person who attempts
to build a critical mass of support for a given technology for
the purpose of establishing it as a technical standard. Source:
Technology Evangelist Director, “So What Does a Technology
Evangelist Do?”
www.technologyevangelistdirector.com/the_ted_role.htm,
accessed July 29, 2011.
4 In December 2004, Merriam-Webster declared “blog” to be
the “Word of the Year.” By 2006, blogging had gained ground.
Many companies tapped into this market and began using this
trend to empower employees (e.g., Sun Microsystems), ask
employees to blog on specific topics as technology, investor
relations (e.g., Dell), evangelize products to the masses (e.g.,
Adobe) and explain decisions and dilemmas to customers (e.g.,
BBC). Blogs gave these organizations an opportunity to
learn more about their target customers and simultaneously gain
deeper insight into their preferences, build relationships
and provide an opportunity to let them be heard. Clive
Thompson, “The Early Years,” New York Times, February 12,
2006,
http://nymag.com/news/media/15971/, accessed September 29,
2011.
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bloggers as one of the major challenges, not only for this
project but for the entire exercise in general.
Writing blog posts required commitment, easy language and
non-factual content. For the enthusiasm to
continue and for the voice to continue to be heard, bloggers also
needed to write on some generic topics.
Too much specificity could reduce the share of voice5 in cyber
space in terms of preference and
consideration.
However, with the passage of time, the nature of writing in
blogs and the expectations from bloggers had
changed. Sajnani commented:
In 2001/02, blogging was not really a known phenomenon and
there were few bloggers.However,
my blog became quite popular and I got many queries and
feedback via email . . . about 30 daily
for each article. The number, however, would reduce as the
article became old.
IBM ventured into corporate blogging in 2009 with the intent of
making a difference in the
ecosystem.6The organization began operations in this domain
with two guidelines: to not talk of products
that were no longer in use and to not share client information.
Care needed to be exercised because,
“Anything happening in an open audience forum shapes
people’s perception,” asserted Rahul Dev,
managing partner of 360 Degree Digital Influence, O&M, who
had been assigned the marketing vertical
project in India.

LAYING THE FOUNDATION
With the help of senior management and technical evangelists,
IBM designed a social media campaign.
The aim was to look at IBM’s social media presence and the
preference of IBM software brands across a
broad set of influences, stated Dr. Deep Parker, director of IBM
India Software Laboratory (ISL).
A goal-setting exercise yielded the following objectives: to
build communities around the IBM software
brand, to establish expertise, to increase mindshare7 of
individual software brands and to influence
purchase decisions. The consolidation and integration of
individual brands’ social media activities were
planned by evaluating existing content and defining boundaries
for the creation of new content.
Additionally, IBM established relationships with key social
media influencers, both internal and external,
who wrote posts, hosted blogs and attracted a major following
in cyber space, by short-listing them for
writing blogs, organizing blogger boot camps and disseminating
information.
Technical experts for individual software brands who could both
write their own blogs and follow other
blogs were identified and recruited from IBM’s labs.8 After
evaluating these experts’ current social media
profiles, roles, skills and competencies, the bloggers were
selected and assigned to participate in active
community conversations and to create a favourable dialogue
for IBM. Finally, training was imparted to
develop these experts’competencies for beginning
conversations, participating in ongoing dialogue and

managing crisis situations.
5Here, “share of voice” refers to the proportion of the total
audience or readership commanded by a media group across its
full range of publishing and broadcasting activities.
6 IBM used “IBM Ecosystem” to refer to the group of people
(i.e., academics, entrepreneurs, business partners, etc.) the
company worked with for building a Smarter Planet. Source:
IBM Ecosystem, “Business Survival Skills: Mobile Computing,”
video, www.youtube.com/user/IBMEcosystem, accessed
November 2, 2012.
7Here, “mindshare” refers to securing a greater share of
customers’ thinking, or mindspace.
8These labs were also known as IBM’s Product Development
Laboratory.
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Under each brand, IBM created specific areas on which posts
could be written. The brands were Rational,
WebSphere, Tivoli, Lotus and IM (see Exhibit 3). For instance,
under WebSphere, two specific areas for
blogging could be business process management and education
infrastructure. Through this process, IBM
aimed to increase connectivity and community influence. For

example, an increase in the number of
footfalls for a particular event or a conference could be
compared with the level and method of interaction
on these blogs to help gauge the success of the new measure.
According to Pratik Goswamy, technical
evangelist, “This is just the beginning and we want this to be
woven into the fabric of the processes of the
organization.”
Are You Listening?
The project was launched with a “listening exercise,” in which
IBM asked O&M to analyse 80 keywords
(see Exhibit 4) with respect to IBM’s products. O&M performed
a ranking by comparing across brands,
competing brands and sub brands. The Radian 6 tool was used
to capture conversations from micro
blogging sites and other social platforms. The measurement
parameter was the frequency of occurrence of
the 80 keywords that had been selected to measure the
reputation of IBM India’s software brands.This
listening exercise helped IBM learn what was being said about
the company in the media. The process
began with O&M measuring the “quantity” of blogs, which,
according to Goswamy, would eventually be
replaced by measuring the “quality” of blogs.
O&M conducted the listening audit for approximatelythree
months. During this time, 12 different
exercises were carried out from an overall brand perspective,
including individual and competitive
brands. By September 2010, both O&M and IBM had a fair idea
about the strengths and weaknesses of
the brands. The identification of these gaps helped IBM to
decide on its future course of action for

promoting products and their value. Gradually the individual
software brands were launched. WebSphere
was followed by IM, and, by November 2010, teams for all the
different software brands were in action.
According to Sengupta, the first few reports from O&M
concentrated on IBM’s position in terms of
conversation volumes and keywords. Over the course of the 12
weeks of the analysis, the most popular
brands were found to be those that were the least talked about,
whereas, their least popular brands were
most talked about, in terms of the volume of posts. The study
documented the percentage and volume of
dialogue across media channels for the five brands (see Exhibit
5).
In Motion
Findings from the exercise revealed that (a) YouTube was an
upcoming and important medium, as were
other social media platforms, such as Twitter and blogs, and (b)
social media collectively was able to
generate a considerable amount of traffic. “It was clear that we
needed to concentrate on not just one, but
on all these facets of social media,” said Sengupta.
After reviewing the report of the “listening exercise,” Bajaj
called a meeting to discuss the findings. She
pointed out that for IBM to increase its mindshare in the
software business, it would need to shift its focus
from advertising to “digital influence.” By actively engaging in
online conversations, IBM would be able
to influence what was being said. In the meeting, Dev pointed
out that sharing was the best possible
strategy for gaining visibility in the social media space.

According to him, advertisements had never been
considered the best tool in the social media space. Although
many sharing tools were available, Twitter
was one of the best. Citing an example, he continued:
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IBM releases a document called the CEO study, with interviews
of over 300 top CEOs of the
country. One can easily view and download this from the
website. But it is a 100-page document.
What we do is read through the whole document, convert the
whole piece into numerous 140
character tweets and then share it along with the hyperlink to
download. This gives amazing
results.
The strategies to be adopted for a blog were different and
required a developers’ perspective, which
would essentially be technical in nature with a communication
aspect that addressed the manner in which
the blog post would be “voiced” in social media. To be able to
increase the share of voice, volume and
reach, and to be heard and responded to, four points needed

consideration, according to Dev. First, the
blog needed to be short and concise, approximately 300 words.
Second, to be able to cater to a wide
audience spanning the globe, the blog had to be written in an
easily comprehensible “blog language.”
Third, unbiased and contemporary writing were necessary
prerequisites. Finally, care needed to be
exercised while writing. Rather than writing open statements,
use of subtle language was advised (see
Exhibit 6 for a sample IBM blog).
In addition, Dev quipped:
Individuality is very important in a blog piece. People should be
able to relate to what you write.
You have to have a style of writing, an individuality associated
with your work, and it has to be
opinionated. If it is not opinionated, then people will not be
interested in reading your blog.
Corporate blogs had strict guidelines and rules, which, in a
sense, ran contrary to the concept of freedom
of expression in blogging. The IBM blogs tried to expand
beyond the confines of corporate guidelines,
but did not totally absolve the writers from rules and
regulations.
O&M was responsible for doing content and sanity checks on all
corporate blog entries prior to their
online posting. The checks were specific to issues related to
copyrights, references, content, grammatical
construction, presentation and language. A three-month training
program was organized by O&M to
ensure that no mistakes would be made with respect to

copyright infringement, referencing and quoting.
In the initial phase, stated Dev, it was a painstaking process, as
all content needed to be run through
plagiarism software, such as Copyscape, Duplichecker and
Terminator.
Inside Out
IBM adopted an “inside out” approach to this project. On the
inside, IBM had its own teams with
technical expertise, and on the outside IBM had external
bloggers who were “in dialogue” about these
technologies.
The top management at IBM was convinced that employees with
technical expertise were most suited to
write posts because, first, they “knew” their product and,
second, they were the best at handling customer
queries/posts on blogs. For instance, a post on product
development, written by an SME, would carry
more conviction than a post created by an employee involved in
servicing. Additionally, the younger
demographic, who had a familiarity with social media tools,
blogs and Facebook, was viewed as an
enabler for drawing SMEs into their fold. According to
Goswamy:

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We are looking at generation Y and Z, the young developers
who are not going to read through
the clutter of books. The reading is going to be through a totally
different channel The factor has
to be exciting and enticing for this group . . . and what better
channel than social media?
Prior to this program, just a few SMEs were already active in
the social media space. When Bajaj and
Sengupta discussed this program with their colleagues, they
were able to generate interest and recruit
other people on board. The selection of bloggers was based on
the stringent criteria of interest, relevance
and value associated with social media. Some employees with
technical expertise of a high order were
also nominated by the brand leaders.
IDEATION TO ACTION
The task assigned to the SMEs was to generate conversation in
spaces where IBM did not currently exist
and to follow the subsequent dialogue. The program ran mostly
on the employees’ internal motivation and
the visibility associated with the work, which they did outside
their normal work hours. To keep them
motivated, the senior management team would ask a simple
question, “Do you want to be the worst
brand?” On more than one occasion, this question acted as a
strong motivator. Other strategies followed

by the company included recognizing competence and
meritocracy by awarding certificates, and issuing
invitations to customer-facing events and conferences. After the
initial setting-up of the team, Bajaj,
Sengupta and Goswamy agreed that further recruitments would
be strategic and based on marketing
goals, interview processes and advanced selection criteria.
With the internal team in place, IBM and O&M decided to scout
for external bloggers, who, based on
their experience and competencies, would be equipped to write
in the blogging space. The selection
process was rigid and covered only business-to-business (B2B)
bloggers who could be potential
influencers for the brand and had a strong presence and
relevance in the social conversation space.
Additionally, they would need to possess the capacity to initiate
discussions and should be active
advocates. The recruitment of these bloggers was based on such
parameters as social influence, ranking,
active participation and relevance to technology, and knowledge
of B2B technology topics. The bloggers
were asked to build awareness about the capabilities at IBM.
Their influence was measured by such
parameters as blog volume per brand, volume of tweets, quality
of tweets, volume of posts per SME,
social media activity per month and “active” vs. “passive” SME
performance. The tools used for
measuring social media influence were Radian 6, HootSuite,
Twitter analytics tools and manual
dashboards for quantitative analytics. Blogs attracting
comments were considered to be qualitative. If they
did not measure up to the company’s expectations, their future
engagement was reconsidered. Finally,
only 10 per cent were retained in the advocacy program.

The project began with training SMEs who could write on
technical topics and managers who possessed
competency on a wide array of subjects and could project an
executive focus. The minimum work
experience required was five months.
IBM organized continuous training sessions on writing skills for
the technical experts who were now part
of the Digital Influence team. They organized “blogferences,”
through which bloggers were given
exposure and the opportunity to meet one another and test their
blogging skills. Awards were given to the
best posts, and discussions were initiated. The first blogference
was organized on June 8, 2010, with the
objective of imparting education on the “dos” and “don’ts” and
the “how to” of writing blogs. The first
blog created in the IBM space was on WebSphere India. The
second blogference was held on
September1, 2010, to catch up with bloggers, review progress
and to encourage participation. The
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objective of the third blogference (October 4, 2010) was
technical. Bloggers were asked to write about the
Software Universe. The fourth blogference, held on October 25,
2010, was a Live Blogging Contest for

all of India’s SMEs, who were assigned current topics such as
smarter software and cloud computing. In
case the bloggers faced difficulty in writing on the assigned
topics, they were given the freedom to create
posts on any other topic.
The sentiment and authority of the bloggers ensured an audience
in cyberspace. The blogs created by
internal experts were low on authority but high on sentiment,
which indicated a low presence and stature
in the social media world. Conversely, blogs by the team of
external bloggers who had a relatively high
standing in the social media domain were low on sentiment, but
high on authority. Both internal and
external bloggers were assigned the task of selecting a social
platform of their choice and increasing
influence. This task, according to a senior technical evangelist,
was as important as building on
competencies, since long-lasting results were directly linked to
competition from other software
companies and independent bloggers, with the latter providing
free and radical opinions on many
technological areas. According to Sengupta, “It really did not
matter whether it was the internal people
blogging or the external, as both got IBM the brand coverage it
required.”
In 2011, the focus of the recruitment process for SMEs shifted
to selecting people who were passionate
about social media, considered it a vehicle for change and were
keen to become the face for the IBM
brand. Almost all the recruited bloggers were from the Indian
cities of Pune, Delhi, Mumbai and
Bengaluru.

From Naïveté to Wisdom
IBM wanted the team members of the Digital Influence project
to consider online blogging as something
internal and not external. According to IBM, it was more of a
mental switch, which would make blogging
a daily activity. Hence, employees were encouraged to write
more posts as IBM felt that regular and
successful blogging was just a matter of “breaking the ice.”
According to Goswamy, “It is about weaving
it in as a part of the process, as a natural extension to what we
do. What starts as a practice of 10 people
has a cascading effect on the rest of the team. That is the
buoyancy we wish to achieve.” Currently, to
write an average blog of 250 to 300 words required
approximately two to three hours for an internal
blogger. However, the competent and experienced external
bloggers would take approximately 45
minutes to write a blog. With time, IBM’s top management felt
that technical experts would improve their
skills in writing and be more time efficient.
Sengupta emphatically stated that a consistent approach was
required. A couple of posts per month would
not be sufficient to draw traffic. Customer support could be
garnered only by influencing opinions
through an increase in share of voice, volume and reach. All
blogs were linked to Twitter, and the
influencers were able to draw traffic in the form of queries
raised by external audiences.
Periodic checkpoints with SME leads helped to improve follow-
up on social media activities. Enabling
sessions were organized, which helped the SMEs to gain
practical experience on social channels. SME
visibility initiatives were taken, such as featuring the bloggers

on IBM.com/India. Software web page and
periodic recognitions increased SMEs’ interest and helped
secure momentum for the program.
Within a year, in 2011, the number of SMEs increased from 75
to 95, of which 49 were new recruits. The
remaining, who had been selected the previous year, were
dropped for various reasons. The share of reach
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for all the brands showed substantial improvement. Lotus had
the maximum rate of increase followed by
IM.
In the year 2010/11, 250 blogs were written in six months by 25
IBM employees. The individual blogs
created by these bloggers were linked to the company’s
corporate blogs. The increase in share of voice
and volume of conversation indicated an overall positive effect
on IBM’s perceived quality. It was agreed
that while this process would have an impact on the sales, it
would not be directly measurable.
According to Parker:

It all seems to indicate that we have hit on something
interesting. We have to scale up the process
and get deeper. Some people will actually become the
convergence point for a few of the larger
communities around. If I see 10,000 readers that is one thing,
but if it scales to millions of
readers, it is completely different. I think we are somewhere in
that evolution, we have to wait
and see how much of momentum builds up around it.
INFLUENCING THE GROUNDSWELL9
IBM worked with O&M to draft a resource deployment strategy
following a pre-engagement analysis.In
the pre-engagement stage, Tivoli was in the lead with Rational
in the second position. The most
prominent social media channels for both Rational and Tivoli
wereblogs and macromedia engines such as
Twitter.
At the pre-engagement stage, the conversations were found to
revolve around individual software brands.
IBM and O&M realized that certain audiences associated
themselves with certain individual brands,
which was a relationship that could be leveraged. Another key
finding was that conversations related to
IBM brand benefits and capabilities were already happening in
the web space, and most presented neutral
views on IBM, which, according to O&M, presented a clear
opportunity to be tapped.
Further analysis of the quality of influencers and content
indicated the absence of posts related to IT
managers, CIOs and senior developers/architects. This omission

indicated the need for a strategy to enter
this circle of influencers. One of the most critical insights from
this exercise was that IBM needed not
only to continue to tap existing bloggers but also to build
relationships with influencers.
A post-engagement analysis (see Exhibit 7) revealed a positive
result for all the software brands. For
example, Rational had experienced a monthly rise in the number
of blog posts. IBM’s share of all blogs
increased from 16.6 per cent in June to 46 per cent in November
2010. Despite a spike in October, the
overall range for the number of IBM related posts was between
16 per cent and 40 per cent of all posts.
Most conversations happened on blogs and macromedia, but
forum discussions were absent for the brand.
The average mention of brands grew by 2,280 per cent between
June 2010 and November 2010.
For WebSphere, blogs captured most of the conversations. Posts
in macromedia had increased over the
months but the share was still low (see Exhibit 8).Overall, the
range in the number of posts led to the
conclusion of a fairly high strength in the blogging activity. An
increase of almost 20 per cent was seen in
the share of voice from June to November, 2010 (see Exhibit 7).
9The term “groundswell” refers to a strong public feeling or
opinion that is detectable even though not openly expressed.
Source: Merriam-Webster online dictionary,www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/groundswell, accessed July 29, 2011.

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On a monthly basis, the volume of posts on blogs for Tivoli and
IM was quite high (see Exhibits 9 and
10). Macromedia posts had also increased over the months. The
volume of conversation in the blogs
spiked from June to November 2010.
The blogs accounted for maximum conversations for Lotus (see
Exhibit 9). Macromedia posts had also
increased over the months. However, forum presence was
almost negligible. In May, Lotus had a 70 per
cent share in blogs, but by November 2010, this share had risen
to 87 per cent. A sharp increase in the
number of posts indicated an increased reach in November 2010
(see Exhibit 7).
In terms of volume, Lotus was the true leader (see Exhibit 10),
but in terms of reach, Rational (17 per
cent), WebSphere (17 per cent) and IM (44 per cent) scored
higher than Lotus (15 per cent) and Tivoli (8
per cent).
BELLY UP?
Within nine months of starting the campaign, IBM Software’s
share of voice in the digital space went
from 0 to 14 per cent, without any actual advertising. The trend

analysis of all five software brands
showed a substantial increase in three of the brands. Two of the
brands, Rational and Tivoli recorded a
decrease (see Exhibit 10).
IBM moved up the ranking from three to two, with Microsoft in
the lead and Oracle not far behind. The
investment in the project represented10 to 12 per cent of the
company’s overall brand marketing budget
for fiscal year 2010/11. IBM’s membership increased from 0 to
10 per cent across social media channels,
which were specific to India. Prior to beginning the digital
influence program IBM had no membership
across channels on the digital media platform. Within a year
IBM’s membership across channels
increased to 300 per cent with brands as Lotus and IM enjoying
a major share of voice in the market.
Activities across social media created a loyal customer base,
placing the company in the league with other
players operating in the same space. However, in August of
2011, Bajaj was still hesitant. She knew that
much more time and energy had to be invested in the campaign.
Her meeting with Sengupta on August
16, 2011, was targeted to plan the way forward.
While volume of share of voice for some of the brands had
increased, the same percentage could not be
assigned to all brands (see Exhibits 11 and 12). Bajaj knew that
it was a massive task to create and sustain
the group of technical evangelists and to ensure the appropriate
choice of medium in cyber space. In view
of changing consumer preferences and blogging challenges, she
wondered whether IBM should continue
with its existing strategies or amend those strategies in favour
of speedy and higher visibility of its
software products.

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EXHIBIT 1: ORGANIZATIONAL CHART FOR
IBM’SDIGITAL INFLUENCE SOFTWARE GROUP
Source: Company records.
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EXHIBIT 2: IBM’S DIGITAL INFLUENCE PROGRAM
TIMELINE, 2010

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EXHIBIT 3: IBM’S FIVE SOFTWARE BRANDS
Software brand Description Social media platform
Rational
It is a fully integrated software delivery platform that addresses
requirements, design, development and management across elect
rical,
mechanical and software technologies. It also helps organisation
s derive
the greatest value from the products they deliver.

Twitter, LinkedIn, Blog
Websphere
WebSphere
Solution
s help organisations build, deploy and run
applications in a proven, secure and flexible environment. Appli
cation
integration and sophisticated user interfaces are key aspects of
WebSphere.
Websphere application
portal, Twitter, Blog
Tivoli
Tivoli software provides smarter solutions and the expertise an

organisation needs to design, build and manage a dynamic
infrastructure. It helps achieve greater efficiency by managing a
ll asset
types on a single platform.
Twitter, YouTube, Video
Blog
Lotus
It helps integrate collaborative environment including e‐mail,
calendaring and ability to extend with applications and collabor
ation
tools. Other real‐time collaboration services include presence, c
hat,
voice, data, video, meetings and telephony.

Information Management
IBM Information Management solutions deliver trusted
information
throughout the information supply chain and helpsanalyse
information
to gain insights. It further helps identify breakdowns and make
better
decisions that optimize business.
Source: IBM, “IBM Rational Software,” www-
01.ibm.com/software/rational/;IBM, “Collaborative
Development and
Operations,” www-01.ibm.com/software/in/rational/;IBM,
“WebSphere Software,” www-
01.ibm.com/software/websphere/;IBM, “IBM Tivoli Software,”
www-01.ibm.com/software/tivoli/;IBM, “Lotus Software,”
www-

01.ibm.com/software/lotus/; and IBM, “Information
Management,” www-01.ibm.com/software/data/, all accessed
July 27,
2011.
EXHIBIT 4: SAMPLE OF THE KEYWORDS IBM PROVIDED
TO OGILVY AND MATHER
agement

ed email software
il
Page 13 9B13M025

EXHIBIT 5: PRE-ENGAGEMENT SHARE OF DIFFERENT
MEDIA ACROSS THE FIVE IBM BRANDS
Rational WebSphere Tivoli Lotus IM
Blogs 76 52 81.5 70 72
Forums - 45 1 2 -
Mainstream News 2.9 - 1 - -
Videos 4.5 - 1.9 - -
Micromedia 16.6 3 14.6 28 28
Facebook - - - - -
Images - - - - -
EXHIBIT 6: SAMPLE IBM BLOG
Saturday, December 17, 2011

Automated Regression—How You Justify
Regression Testing is nothing but looking for bugs in code that
used to work in past versions. It is not an easy task
and so considered to be time consuming and need to be executed
with each build. So if we address this task will
allow to find bugs in code as fast as possible with minimal
effort (automated!). This becomes more important the
longer your product has been in production to keep customers
happy. Bugs will happen and now way we can stop
them we just want them to either be minor ones or issues
limited in new code —not the old stuff that people rely on to
get their job done till date.
It also acts to reduce the “drudge” work of manual testing and
frustrated QA and Customer Support Teams. That
work is also subject to human memory as even if all the test
cases written somewhere — are they all up to date? Are
we sure? What happens if “human memory” on Leave :-)

Similarly automated regression tests also act to codify and
formalize one’s experience so, you don’t lose the entirety
of knowledge in case someone from the team move on as
happens in this Dynamic Industry. So if we handle this will
free up all resources at different levels which can do something
“real productive.” It also helps your team be “more
proactive and less reactive.” The more team spends fighting
fires the harder it is to have a truly enjoyable work place.
Not sure if you can enjoy this but I don’t as it Stress out.
I keep detailed steps and possible available tools like from IBM
Rational and various Automation Manager from IBM
Tivoli and IBM Web Sphere with various work-flows in
upcoming blogs in January.
Ritesh
Disclaimer: The postings on this site are my own and don’t
necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or
opinions
Posted by Ritesh Kumar Gupta at 10:30 PMNo comments:

Page 14 9B13M025
EXHIBIT 6 (CONTINUED)
Friday, December 2, 2011
Automation—How it will help Optimize Resources
Complexity on SDLC is increasing daily and so is kind of issues
and handling them optimally and spending time
where it makes sense depending on your role and its viewpoint.

For example when I’m handling, things like use resources and
infrastructure optimally and enable Software to do
redundant things and allow teams to spend their time in
enhancing capabilities than doing these tasks. As it requires
to spend time in automating areas and so it takes the back seat
as you need to perform daily tasks. Even though
everyone aware of the positive impact of this and being an
architect I’d rather minimize or remove manual efforts — a
long-term gain to team productivity but at the cost of product in
the short-term. Now when I see this from developer’s
perspective I’d rather be focused on developing and handling
the cool new product than bug fixing or modifying
current tests.
However good automated regression testing is something that
“no way” we can ignore and when I say testing it
means starting from Code Check-in till release Cycle no manual
intervention should require. Not even for
configurations of machines or test assets. It’s usually not a huge
investment of time but the payoff is large and grows
over time - like a savings account. From each point of view

Developer --> Less Time bug fixing Enjoy your Family Life as
well
Manager --> Better quality product, risks identified earlier.
Happy Customers
Architect --> Spend time in new Designs with minimal product
risk.
QA -->Less manual drudge work and satisfied management and
improved quality.
In next Blogs I will discuss why and How of Automating
Regression Cycle.
Ritesh
Disclaimer: The postings on this site are my own and don’t
necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or
opinions
Posted by Ritesh Kumar Gupta at 10:30 PMNo comments:
Source: http://riteshkumargupta.blogspot.in/, accessed
September 9, 2012.

EXHIBIT 7: POST-ENGAGEMENT VISIBILITY OF THE FIVE
IBM BRANDS, JUNE TO NOVEMBER
2010
Source: Company records
Page 15 9B13M025
EXHIBIT 8: POST-ENGAGEMENT SHARE OF VOICE OF
IBM SOFTWARE WEBSPHERE AND

TIVOLI
WebSphere Tivoli
Blogs
61%
Micro‐
media
17%
Forums
0%
Others
22%
EXHIBIT 9: POST-ENGAGEMENT SHARE OF VOICE OF

IBM SOFTWARE LOTUS AND
INFORMATION MANAGEMENT10
Blogs
87%
Micromedia
8%
Forums
0%
Others
5%
SOV of Lotus
Blogs
60%
Micromedia
30%
Forums

0%
Others
10%
SOV of IM
Note: SOV = share of voice
10
Post-engagement share of voicefor Rationalsoftware was not
available.

9B13M025
EXHIBIT 10: IBM SOFTWARE SHARE OF VOICE RESULTS,
PRE-ENGAGEMENT AND POST-
ENGAGEMENT
Pre Engagement Post Engagement
SOV in Terms of
Volume (Per cent)
SOV in Terms of
Volume (Per cent)
Rational 32 9
WebSphere 3 19
Tivoli 57 7
Lotus 7 36
IM 1 29

EXHIBIT 11: COMPARISON OF THE COVERAGE OF THE
FIVE IBM BRANDS, JUNE TO
NOVEMBER 2010
Page 17 9B13M025
EXHIBIT 12: BRAND-WISE COMPARISON OF THE FIVE
IBM BRANDS, JUNE TO NOVEMBER2010

Parameters Rational Lotus Tivoli Information
Management
WebSphere
Volume of
conversation
Increase in share
of blogs from 16.6
per cent to 46 per
cent
Increase in
volume of blog
posts by 3,333
per cent
Increase in
volume of
conversation in
blogs by 20 per
cent

Increase in volume
of conversation in
blogs by 693 per
cent
Increase in
blog posts by
70 per cent
SOV Increase in
macromedia from
14 per cent to 56
per cent
Increase in
blogs from 70
per cent to 87
per cent
Constant share of
blogs
Increase in share

of Macromedia 28
per cent to 30 per
cent
Increase in
share of voice
from 40 per
cent to 71 per
cent
Trend
analysis
Overall, increase
of 23 per cent
Increase in
number of
posts and
reach by
1,933 per cent
Increase in
volume of

conversation by
40 per cent
Increase in the
volume of posts by
421.8 per cent
Increase
involume of
posts by 82.8
per cent

H W13109 IBM’S DIGITAL INFLUENCE PROGRAM .docx

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