IBM challenges Microsoft with huge ad buy

Very gutsy. Apparently IBM believes that if they can level the playing field with Microsoft in an evenly matched ad campaign. It also does not hurt that IBM is offering cold hard cash for converts, either.

IBM Corp., the world’s largest provider of computer services, will spend more than $300 million on an advertising campaign to win customers and help revive its image with investors.

Chief Executive Officer Sam Palmisano is spending half his $632 million annual ad budget on print and TV spots that feature an asterisk and the question, “What Makes You Special?”

The ads, championed by strategy chief Bruce Harreld, set up a showdown between IBM and Microsoft Corp. as the companies seek to bolster sales and stock prices. International Business Machines is the No. 2 software maker behind Microsoft, which this month announced a $500 million effort to win corporate customers by exploiting questions about IBM’s services strategy.

“People are confused, and that’s why we are going into that campaign,” Harreld, who also took control of marketing in January, said in an interview at IBM’s Armonk, N.Y., headquarters. “We’re really trying to get at this problem.”

The ads, debuting in April, break with IBM tradition by including a theme song, “I’m Not Like Everybody Else” by 1960s British rock group The Kinks, and by painting the logo across a Manhattan helipad. Source: Seattle PI

[tags]marketing,microsoft,ibm,services strategy,manhattan[/tags]