It’s hard to remember today that the Internet was just a toddler in the early 1990s. But Amazon.com didn’t launch until 1995, the same year eBay was founded. Amidst all the high-profile ideas and paradigm shifts of the time, IBM took a pragmatic approach to how the Internet could impact modern business transactions.
Early on in the days of the Web, IBM laid out a specific vision for how e-business could transform the world:
- A bank could build an electronic debit service that would allow customers to shop at virtual stores and have charges automatically deducted from their bank accounts.
- A university could create an online archive of radiology images, ultrasounds, MRIs and CAT scans, eventually replacing a film library the size of a small theater.
- A publisher could open a store for books, movies, music and videos on the Internet.
- A major consumer goods company could manage purchase orders online for an inventory system that could be continually replenished.
The e-business campaign
In these advertisements, the red “e” logo, resembling an @ sign, was designed to remind readers of the then fledgling Internet. It was central to an advertising campaign for e-business that IBM and its agency of record Ogilvy & Mather, New York, launched in 1997.
By the end of the year, knowledge of e-business was up 25 percent among IBM’s target audience.
The campaign also illustrated the broad potential of e-business by associating the “e” logo with a variety of people, scenes and industries.
It was so successful that it won two Effie awards for best advertising, one in 1999 and another in 2005 for a sustained campaign.