IBM WATSON ADVERTISING — CANNES LIONS
Creative Director | GPJ | Experiential, B2B Brand Activation
CHALLENGE
IBM Watson Advertising needed to change how the global advertising industry perceived weather data. At Cannes Lions, the most concentrated gathering of senior marketing decision-makers on the planet, the brief was to demonstrate that AI-powered weather insights were a precision instrument for predicting consumer behaviour, not a seasonal blunt tool. The problem was that IBM kept explaining how the technology worked instead of what it was worth.
INSIGHT
A CMO at Cannes does not need a data architecture lesson. They need to feel the gap between what they currently know about their customers and what IBM can reveal. Weather is not a data category. It is the original influencer. The only signal that affects every human being on the planet, every day, without exception. Unbiased, universal, and in a post-cookie world, privacy-safe by design. Reframe weather data on those terms and the technology sells itself.
SOLUTION
Brought in as Creative Director and narrative architect, we wrote the full VO script and structured the four-chapter experience: weather as universal influencer, The Weather Channel as the world's most accurate data source, AI making data actionable, the open web as delivery system. The endline that came from that work: Let's create a way for weather data to work for you. Service-oriented. CMO-centred. Converting interest into intent. The centrepiece was a custom 3D-printed rotating dial that visitors physically turned to trigger data stories connecting weather, location, emotion, and consumer behaviour in real time. Projection mapping, surround sound, and 4D physical effects across three floors. The proof point that landed hardest: we made it snow inside a gallery in Cannes. The first time it had snowed at Cannes Lions.
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