IBM

Turning complex tech into compelling stories

Overview

What I Did

For nearly four years I led IBM's retainer account end to end and built the governance, PMO and operating model behind 15+ projects across digital platforms, brand, motion, live activations and content. With up to seven projects running concurrently, that structure kept delivery predictable, finances healthy and the work at a consistently high bar, which made IBM one of the agency's longest-running and most trusted partnerships.

Featured IBM Projects

My Role

Senior Director, Creative Ops & Program Management

Core Disciplines

The Partnership

Our multi-year partnership with IBM is a true example of creative collaboration. As a retainer client for nearly four years, IBM consistently showed what it means to be a forward-thinking, collaborative partner. Each engagement was a chance to tell IBM's story in a more dynamic, human way, turning some of the world's most complex technology into stories people could actually follow.

Behind that great work sat an account that was never still. Each workstream ran with its own stakeholders, timelines and budgets. My job was to turn that complexity into client confidence and team clarity, sustaining high creative standards and commercial health across multi-year lifecycles.

The Account

A continuous, multi-project relationship can't be run like a string of one-off projects. Early on I evolved and implemented an account operating model that covered how we staffed, governed, reported on and delivered the work. It gave IBM a predictable partner and gave our teams room to do their best work.

Governance & Model

A continuous, multi-project relationship can't run on manual status decks. I designed the operating model around custom dashboards and automations I built myself, all fed from a single source of truth.

Tiered dashboards

  • Executive view: project health and burn against budget

  • Program view: milestones, dependencies and utilization

  • Team view: approvals and QA

  • Client view: a transparent window into progress for IBM

The Future, Fully Optimized

Making the promise of AI investments a reality

Automation that caught problems early

  • Weekly burn reports tracked spend against milestones and flagged anything that crossed a warning threshold.

  • A rolling 12-week capacity model with scenario planning showed staffing gaps more than a month out, so we could re-sequence work or bring in the pre-approved contractor bench before the team felt the crunch.

Paired with consistent stage gates across all three delivery streams, this allowed me to spend my time on decisions instead of chasing status. IBM received a transparent partner and our teams had the space to do their best work.

  • The challenge.

    Businesses hit barriers when it's time to scale. Fragmented digital channels create security vulnerabilities and rising cost and complexity, all of which block the adoption of new technology, including AI. IBM built its Hybrid Cloud platform to simplify and unify complex business ecosystems, giving companies a secure, open and consistent foundation for AI. The difficult part was visualizing that story.

    What we did.

    I led a multi-disciplinary team that created a visual vocabulary turning complex business processes into simple 3D components. Each component represents one part of a business ecosystem, and together they brought life to Hybrid Cloud, bringing harmony to systems that used to be disconnected. Built as a full design toolkit that fits into IBM's existing visual language, so IBM could keep producing long after launch.

    The result.

    A campaign that shows Hybrid Cloud solving widespread AI challenges in a clear, captivating and visually powerful way, strengthening IBM's relevance in the AI conversation. It also left IBM with a reusable system rather than a one-off asset. The unique 3D design system has since scaled to other products and services of IBM.

Where Science Meets Story

Revealing the future of computing, from the inside out

  • The challenge.

    IBM Research's mission has always been to invent what's next in computing. IBM reopened its Think Lab to bring scientists from different computing disciplines into one shared space. Most of the audience would never be able to walk through its doors, so IBM devised a way to bring the lab's work to them.

    What we did.

    I led the team through ideation and production of a series of videos that give viewers a sense of the intrigue inside IBM Research, showing IBM's ongoing work in quantum and next-gen computing. We used the lab itself as the set, capturing the science in action, and kept the look grounded in science, curiosity and storytelling.

    The result.

    A cohesive series where every film stands on its own and the set works side by side. It opened up one of IBM's most exclusive spaces to a global audience.

Breaking Open the Black Box

Making the invisible, visible

  • The challenge.

    AI is everywhere in business, but how models produce their outputs is still unclear to many people. That ambiguity leads to inaccurate results and puts a company's reputation at risk. IBM built a comprehensive solution to open up the AI "black box" and needed a compelling way to show its value at launch.

    What we did.

    My team created a live activation around podiums designed to evoke the black box companies face when AI models aren't properly governed. The structures used cymatics, the study of sound and vibration made visible, as a physical metaphor for AI modeling. Visitors worked through three real-world industry use cases, selecting, building and deploying a model. When the model was working correctly, the table salt on a vibrating plate settled into a symmetrical pattern.

    The result.

    The activation launched alongside Watsonx and sparked deep conversations with prospective clients about how the platform could help their businesses. Visitors spent an average of more than six minutes on each use case, three times the pre-event goal. We also built a digital version that simulates the cymatics experience, so IBM could take it to conferences worldwide.

A Best-in-Class Recruitment Portal

A modern careers site for the new age of flexible work

  • The challenge.

    AI is everywhere in business, but how models produce their outputs is still unclear to many people. That ambiguity leads to inaccurate results and puts a company's reputation at risk. IBM built a comprehensive solution to open up the AI "black box" and needed a compelling way to show its value at launch.

    What we did.

    My team created a live activation around podiums designed to evoke the black box companies face when AI models aren't properly governed. The structures used cymatics, the study of sound and vibration made visible, as a physical metaphor for AI modeling. Visitors worked through three real-world industry use cases, selecting, building and deploying a model. When the model was working correctly, the table salt on a vibrating plate settled into a symmetrical pattern.

    The result.

    The activation launched alongside Watsonx and sparked deep conversations with prospective clients about how the platform could help their businesses. Visitors spent an average of more than six minutes on each use case, three times the pre-event goal. We also built a digital version that simulates the cymatics experience, so IBM could take it to conferences worldwide.