Once rivals, IBM and Apple re-formed a historic partnership to launch an iOS App Store for Enterprise Business. IBM would bing the big data and analytics capabilities in the form of apps and Apple would provide the iPhones and iPads, getting both IBM and Apple in the hands of enterprise workers in the fields of Healthcare, Retail, Travel & Transportation, Financial Services, Government, Telco, and Insurance across the United States.

A top secret initiative at Ogilvy, I both created and lead a small team in the go-to-market strategy, online experience and launch / marketing plan for the US Market. Building within IBM’s current web structure and adhering to Apple’s brand guidelines, we built an app store and lead-gen hub that needed to scale from an initial, highly successful 10 apps at launch, to 10 every subsuquent quarter, marching to the goal of 100 enterprise apps in market.

Working for months behind tight security prior to the enterprise partnership, my team and I at Ogilvy helped architect the UX, UI and IA and language with IBM. It was so hushhush that the CEO & CCO of Ogilvy were even on a “need to know basis” for this launch.

With every new iOS app, we needed to piece together the enterprise vertical that the app would live under, write the copy, work with Apple and IBM on assets and imagery, build the site and synchronies strategic releases and messaging. Apple’s Marcom team would then, in parallel, mirror our structure and content for IBM on the Apple enterprise website. The Apple + IBM partnership experience underwent three deployment iterations based on data-driven learnings, optimizations and the growing app catalogue.

The success of this partnership would see IBM and Apple incorporate machine learning with Watson-ML with Apple Core ML making these businesses apps for enterprise even more intelligent.