Turbotodd

Brian Fetherstonhaugh, as the chairman and CEO of OgilvyOne Worldwide, has a unique vantage point on how brands are built, how corporate cultures are created, and what happens as the world goes digital. In the course of the past 25 years, Brian has worked hands-on with many of the world’s leading brands including, IBM, American Express, Cisco, Coca-Cola, Motorola, Unilever, Nestlé, Kodak, and Yahoo! Today, Brian leads OgilvyOne Worldwide, the interactive marketing and consulting arm of the Ogilvy Group. With more than 4,000 staff in 50 countries, OgilvyOne is at the forefront of the digital revolution. In 2007 and 2009, the Forrester Report ranked Ogilvy as a leading U.S. interactive agency.

OgilvyOne Worldwide Chairman and CEO Brian Fetherstonhaugh started our Q&A today here at the IBM Smarter Commerce Global Summit in Madrid by revealing who his favorite character on the 1960s-era AMC show about advertising, “Mad Men,” was.  Drum roll, please….It’s…JOAN.

Mainly, Brian explained, because Joan “gets things done.”

We then turned our discussion to the vast evolution IBM’s own marketing culture has endured the past two decades, and the opportunities and challenges presented by the changing marketing landscape for CMOs, whose tenures these days last an average 27 months.

Brian also discussed other key issues facing chief marketing officers during this time of great change, including the need for CMOs to focus on new talents and skills development. Before he jetted off to another city somewhere in the world, Brian left the IBM Smarter Commerce Global Summit, and you, with some valuable marketing advice.

And when you watch the video, never mind the Spanish waiter who entered the frame for just a moment: He was simply doing what we wish to see companies everywhere do best, servicing their customers!

It’s one thing to hear from our capable IBM execs at events like the IBM Smarter Commerce Global Summit in Madrid.

Marriott’s vice president of consumer knowledge, Stephan Chase, explains to the gathered IBM Smarter Commerce Global Summit crowd in Madrid on Tuesday afternoon the secret to Marriott’s customer-centric approach in the hospitality industry.

It’s a whole other thing to hear from our customers, and that’s precisely what we were able to do in our general session yesterday afternoon.

Stephan Chase, who is the vice president for customer knowledge at Marriott International, took the stage at the Hotel Auditorium to explain how Marriott has come to adjust to a more data-centric world.

Chase started his talk with an anecdote about the cards his staff left in restrooms to encourage people to re-use their towels, with the vantage point differing on the meaning of the data like Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai — the story you got back depended on who was retelling it!

But, ultimately, Chase observed, the so-called “preference cascade” effect kicked in.  The cascade being that phenomenon where an individual thinks they’re the only one thinking something, or the only ones in their social circle, when, in fact, they discover there are plenty of others are thinking the same thing.

And, hence, they all start to change their behavior.

Yes, as it came to mind in my own head, it’s all very Malcolm Gladwell “Tipping Point-ish.”

Chase went on to explain that this phenomenon brings to mind that in the modern age, and particularly for hotels, but also more generally, it’s become even more important that what you do is much more important than what you say.

Generation C will sniff out any inconsistency between the two, and it won’t matter what you write on the card or say in your commercial if your actual organizational behavior is not living up to your actions.

Chase then related a story about his grandmother, explaining she used to say that “we are all servants,” and that he didn’t understand what she meant until he’d worked for Marriott for a number of years, and recognizing that in the hospitality industry, he was in a service-oriented business where actions always spoke louder than words.

“When founder Bill Marriott created our first hotel in 1957, he had a saying,” Chase explained.  “Take care of the associate. And they’ll take care of the customer. And the customer will keep coming back.”

With that saying, Marriott went on to open some 3,700 hotels in 70 countries, and to this day, the company focuses on discovering and applying truth for the benefit of customer and company alike.

He explained there are three key factors in hospitality: Freedom of choice, transparent pricing and repeat and referral.  That is to say, there are plenty of hotels that will be price competitive, so the consumer has a lot of choice when it comes to hotels, and that there are very few monopolistic businesses.  In the hotel business in particular, the majority of their business are not with “one-time stayers,” but rather people who (hopefully) keep coming back.

Therefore, in our social-mediated world, “connected customers are the best customers: They have a broad set of experiences, provide valuable feedback, and are engaged in greater variety of channels,” whether that be via smartphone, landline Internet, or even phone.

Then, Chase shared a key insight of the Marriott customer base: “If you take a look at your customer base and you abstract out their future value, I bet you’d find something: The broader the set of purchases and channels they engage with, the greater their future value!”

Therefore, Marriott’s Smarter Commerce evolution has been to focus on engaging the “connected” consumer to drive increased demand by delivering relevant messages to them, providing appropriate and relevant service, and also by recognizing milestones in the relationship (through points award programs and the like).

“If you do a good job of it,” Chase observed, “the customer will be more likely to come back. Thinking about the outcome (coming back), as opposed to the method (the marketing or service), is what will help keep you focused.”

With that, Chase left the IBM Smarter Commerce Global Summit audience with some actionable “to dos”:

1. Marketing should focus on WHAT to do — the IT organization should focus on HOW to do it

2. Focus on positive customer outcomes

3. Measure results, refine, and revise.

If you do those things, Chase concluded, you’ll realize some key lessons learned that will provide long-term customer connections and a roadmap for success that will fit your culture for years to come.

I mentioned in my last post that I must have been dreaming on the way over to Madrid. Or maybe it was just all these thoughts running through my head before I actually drifted off to some semblance of jet-engine-drone-induced slumber.

The English East India Company was an English and later (from 1707) British joint-stock company formed for pursuing trade with the East Indies but which ended up trading mainly with the Indian subcontinent. The Company was granted a Royal Charter in 1600, making it the oldest among several similarly formed European East India Companies. Shares of the company were owned by wealthy merchants and aristocrats. The government owned no shares and had only indirect control. The Company operated its own large army with which it controlled major portions of India.

One of those thoughts reminded me of the guy in the YouTube video who reminded us all what an amazing time we live in. That we can climb into what essentially constitutes a rather large beer can and zoom a few thousand miles away in only a matter of hours. In a journey that, once upon a time, would have taken a Benjamin Franklin or a Thomas Jefferson weeks by sea, and likely would have been filled with seasickness, scurvy, or worse, when all they wanted to do was get there.

That was one of my thoughts: Then I fell asleep somewhere near Dallas and woke up somewhere over lovely Spain.

Be Amazed By This Amazing Opportunity

But I also dreamed of commerce. Of its history, and its evolution, and what an amazing time we live in terms of how we conduct business.

I went and looked up “commerce” on Wikipedia, curious as to what the “crowd” out there had to say. That, too, is another relatively new concept, to be able to “crowdsource” information from people around the globe.

Their definition goes something like this: Commerce is the whole system of an economy that constitutes an environment for business. The system includes legal, economic, political, social, cultural, and technological systems that are in operation in any country. Thus, commerce is a system or an environment that affects the business prospects of an economy or a nation-state.

First, there were barter economies, where trading was the principal “facility” in which peoples bartered for goods and services from one another.

Then, currency was introduced as a standardized money, which, facilitated a wider exchange of goods and services — everything from coins to lumps of precious metals to, today, even virtualized currency like “Bitcoin.”

But these days, as the Wikipedia entry observes, commere also includes a complex system of companies that try to maximize their profits by offering products and services to the market (consisting of both individuals and other companies) at the lowest production cost.

The Early Road To Smarter Commerce

So what did some of those early commerce scenarios look like? Imagine, for example, how the domestication of camels allowed Arabian nomads to control long distance trade in spices and silk from the Far East.

Or the “Silk Road,” which was established after the diplomatic travels of the Han Dynasty Chinese envoy Zhang Qian to Central Asia, which allowed Chinese goods to make their way to India, Persia, the Roman Empire — and vice versa.

The English East India Company was an English and, later (from 1707), British joint-stock company formed for pursuing trade with the East Indies, but which ended up trading mainly with the Indian subcontinent. Shares of the company were owned by wealthy merchants and aristocrats. The government owned no shares and had only indirect control. The Company operated its own large army with which it controlled major portions of India.

In more recent times, we saw the introduction of 23 countries agreeing to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, in 1947, which attempted to rationalize trade among nations.

Going All In…For Your Customer

Today’s smart consumers expect to engage with companies when and how they want, through physical, digital, and mobile means, and they want a consistent experience across all channels. Because they are empowered and connected, they can compare notes, quickly, and they can champion a brand or sully a reputation with the click of a mouse or the stroke of their tablet computer.

Today, circa 2012, we find ourselves at another inflection point in the history of commerce, one which begins and ends with the customer. Today’s commerce environment features a customer who is dictating a new set of terms in the dynamic between buyers and sellers, and these are very smart consumers, ones empowered by technology, transparency, and an abundance of information.

Just simply walk through your closest local retailer or your nearest airport, and you’ll see signs of this new and smarter consumer. Via smartphones and other mobile devices, they are connected real-time to an absurd amount of information that empowers them as buyers, and, in turn, requires an accelerated sophistication on the part of sellers, no matter the product or service.

These consumers expect to engage with companies when and how they want, through physical, digital, and mobile means, and they want a consistent experience across all channels.

Because they are empowered and connected, they can compare notes, quickly, and they can champion a brand or sully a reputation with the click of a mouse or the stroke of their tablet computer.

No More Business As Usual

This ultimately means, of course, that there is no longer such a thing as “business as usual.” Empowered and connected consumers are deeply linked — to their friends, colleagues, and the world at large — and they evaluate and compare the quality of their experiences with those of others. And they are the ones who can reward, or penalize, the businesses that do, or do not, give them what they want.

This is new trading crossroads of the 21st Century, and it is those companies who are interested and compelled to act to enable and encourage this new consumer who are in attendance here at the IBM Smarter Commerce Global Summit here in Madrid this week.

To thrive in this new age of the customer, they recognize they must understand the motivations of each individual purchaser. They must predict, and not merely react to, customers’ needs and preferences.

They must understand not only what they buy and where, but also why and how they choose to buy it.

That’s what this new world demands. That we need not only a better system of doing business.

But, also, a “smarter commerce” environment, one that puts the customer at the center of all operations, and that helps companies better buy, market, sell and service their offerings accordingly.

Our first interview at IBM Impact 2012 this year was with IBM senior vice president, IBM Software Solutions Group, Mike Rhodin.  This was also our first ever opportunity to interview Mike, so we were especially excited about this particular interview.

Mike leads an organization which focuses on delivering integrated offerings that target high-growth opportunities, including business analytics, collaboration, and industry solutions.  As a senior vice president, Mike is responsible for a $5 billion business portfolio which represents one of the fastest growing and most acquisitive.

In our interview, Mike explained that his business is reaching more of a non-traditional technology buyer, the senior “line of business” executives who have played a much more dominant role in tech acquisition through the economic downturn, and who are looking for solutions that can help their organizations differentiate themselves in the marketplace, and and even more readily empower front-line executives and decision makers.

He also brought us up to date on what IBM’s Watson has been up to over the past year, explaining that Watson finally got a “real” job — actually, a couple of them!

In his former IBM lives, Mike has served as the general manager of IBM’s Northeast Europe organization, as well as the GM of IBM’s Lotus Software division, a stint in which he led a team to create the “human side” of IBM’s software strategy by developing IBM’s collaborative technology and solutions which integrate people, data, and business processes.

Scott’s interviewed David Meerman Scott several times for developerWorks, but never on camera.  That changed at SXSW Interactive 2012.

If you’re not familiar with Scott’s work, you’re missing out on one of the early voices analyzing and detailing the opportunity presented by social media.  From The New Rules of Marketing & PR  to his latest book, Newsjacking, David Meerman Scott has been a consistent and practical voice in helping organizations large and small, as well as individuals, navigate the contours of the new and social media.

He talks about all that, and the marketing lessons he learned from the Grateful Dead, in our extended interview below.

It’s snowing in Toronto today.  And I mean, like, really, really snowing.  Like it apparently hasn’t snowed all winter.

Ed Abrams, vice president of IBM's midmarket business, leads a discussion on LinkedIn about the use of social media by small and medium-sized businesses.

I’ve very much enjoyed my two days on the ground here thus far — the team has been most gracious and I’ve learned more than I can process about our live chat operations (no, not THAT kind of chat!).  The kind where we help you buy the stuff you’re looking for!

And on the help front, I wanted to share some news coming out of the IBM PartnerWorld event taking place in New Orleans this week.  Today, IBM announced the expansion of a global skills initiative to educate clients and business partners on social media tools and techniques to showcase expertise and create new business opportunities.

With today’s news, IBM is further investing in its clients and business partners across the world including emerging markets such as China, Australia and Saudi Arabia to develop the skills that will enable them to sharpen their social networking capabilities to build even stronger and more interactive ties with their clients.

The IBM eight week social media boot camp is available to IBM business partners to provide the education and skills necessary to successfully engage in social media and begin driving the conversation around their brand.

This initiative provides IBM business partners and clients access to one-on-one social media coaches who set measurable goals for building and exercising social acumen. The customized curriculum is designed for organizations to become more comfortable and effective in their marketing and sales efforts.  By using social networking tools and techniques participants learn to integrate social media into their daily business activities.

IBM Business Partners Gets Social 

IBM Business Partner Starfire Technologies, Inc. was among the first organizations to enroll in IBM’s Social Media Boot Camp. Prior to the program, Starfire’s use of social media channels was limited. After enrolling in the eight week social skills program, Starfire is now leveraging social channels to re-architect the way it does business.

For example, as a result the tools and techniques offered by the Social Media Boot Camp, Starfire is reconstructing its company website, integrating social media tools and platforms to best interact with customers. The organization has transformed its business strategy by extending its reach through the social networks to create   significant interactions and two-way conversations with its customers.

“IBM’s Social Media Boot Camp was instrumental in our understanding of how to effectively and strategically engage with our customers and business partners over social media platforms,” said Mary Spurlock, Vice President of Marketing, Starfire Technologies, Inc..  “It also taught us enhanced ways to listen to our customers and engage in interactive conversations.  We learned to listen on the channels where our business partners and clients are participating, thus helping to identify and move opportunities faster through the pipeline. It’s also helped us to create a valuable collaborative forum for marketing and client support.”

To join in the conversation around IBM’s Social Media Boot Camps, visit LinkedIn.

For you regular readers of this blog, you know I attended and blogged the IBM Global SmartCamp Finals in San Francisco week before last…wow, has it already been two weeks?

In fact, it was two weeks ago today that Profitero was announced as this year’s winner.

Although as I mention in the videocast with Scott Laningham below — in which we talk for about 15 minutes about what I saw, heard, and witnessed at the SmartCamp finals — all the participants, as well as those of we IBM bystanders, were winners when it came to hearing some of these groundbreaking business plans for helping build smarter (and more data-driven) cities around the globe.

I also enjoyed meeting my blogging counterpart, Steve Hamm, who provided extensive coverage on IBM’s Smarter Planet blog and with whom I broke bread…err, noodles…somewhere in Chinatown.  I couldn’t find my way back to that noodle shop if I had to — I’m not sure if Steve could, either.

“Dave drove a Ford.”

This year's SuperBowl ads sometimes left little to the imagination, yet also provided some needed optimism about the future of the American dynasty...along with the slingshot babies and beer-retrieving canines.

That’s all the ash-colored gentleman who survived the GM “Apocalypse” in last night’s SuperBowl advertising lineup had to say.  And then Ford pounced, trying to convince GM to pull the ad from SuperBowl rotation, arguing it was misleading.

Finally, some SuperBowl advertising drama!

As promised, I was on a JetBlue plane flying back to Texas from California last night.  The pilot joked before takeoff that he would get us up and off the ground as soon as possible, so we could get down to the business of watching the game, and then fate played a cruel joke as it took several longgg minutes for the DirecTV satellite to kick back in so we could join Al and Chris.

So, I missed a number of the early SuperBowl commercials, but being the faithful marketing pundit that I am, I went back and watched them all this morning.

I’ll give the overall year in SuperBowl advertising a “B-.”  Better than past years, but still plenty of upside available based on the inventory I watched.

Without any question, the most impactful spot of the evening was the “Imported from Detroit” spot starring Clint Eastwood.

He had my attention from the moment I heard it was him, and the message was powerful, couldn’t have been in better context, and was the kind of economic and America cheerleading ad we could stand more of these days.

What was it trying to sell?  Cars?  American exceptionalism? Detroit?  All of the above?  Yes.

Beyond that, I try to think of those moments that were not only funny or interesting, but stuck with me and pulled their brand along with it.  Remember, advertising’s supposed to sell!

So, here we go…

The moment the baby in the infirmary in the E-Trade ad responded, “Speed dating.”

Classic.

Jerry Seinfeld trying to buy some poor schmuck’s Acura, a spot which also saw the return of the “Soup Nazi.”

The cute little rescue dog ad rescuing people from thirst by getting them a Bud Light, titled “Herewego.”

The nice, big dog from Doritos who blackmails its owner with a bag of chips so as not to spill the beans about the missing cat.

The speed racing bulldog Mr. Quigly, who outpaced all the greyhounds in a commercial for Sketchers (although I don’t remember the specific shoe!)

And then there was that really subtle, yet memorable, message from Telaflora.com about Valentine’s Day: “Give and you shall receive.”

Ooo-kaayyyy.

But there’s little doubt, the night belonged to the automakers.

11 out of the 36 spots I counted were from car purveyors, not including the “Imported from Detroit” spot starring Eastwood.

Not all of them were funny, and certainly not every single one of them was memorable, but they were there, en masse, in the aggregate as a seemingly strong industry spending big money to pitch their latest wares.

That seemed to be a message in and of itself, a resurgent car market as leading indicator for an even more resurgent economy.

And as Clint Eastwood reminded us all, it’s only halftime in America.

In the last keynote session before Profitero was announced as the “IBM Entrepreneur of the Year,” Garage.com founder, VC, former Machead, and all around tech cheerleader Guy Kawasaki paid a visit to speak to the gathered IBM SmartCamp finalists.

In classic Guy Kawasaki fashion, the renowned tech thought leader, former Apple employee twice-over, and celebrated speaker completely overhauls his presentation to the IBM SmartCamp finals just moments before he went onstage. The audience was certainly NOT disappointed in the change of topic.

Though his talk was entitled “The Art of Enchantment,” Kawasaki, in typical Kawasaki fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants fashion, announced he was supplanting that canned pitch with one more geared towards the gathered entrepreneurial masses, “12 Lessons I Learned Working With Steve Jobs.”

Kawasaki started his pitch by joking that he’d just been in the greenroom where the judges for the competition were gathered, and that there were five bottles of wine in there, so don’t expect a verdict anytime soon!

Then, he got semi-serious and explained he’d worked from Apple on two different occasions, 1983-1987 and again in 1995-1997, so he was uniquely positioned to comment on what all he learned from Jobs.

Before he turned to the lessons, Kawasaki suggested “the world is a lot less interesting without Steve Jobs. Most entrepreneurs would be fortunate to create one standard…Jobs created five or six (the iPhone, the iPad, the iPod, etc.)

Kawasaki went on: “I’m sure right now he’s up there telling God how to run the universe.”

Then, on to the lessons.

Number one.  “Experts” are clueless.  As entrepreneurs, if you start listening to all the experts, you will be led wrong.  Time and time again people told Steve Jobs nobody would buy an (insert Apple product here)…At one point, even Michael Dell told Apple they should dissolve the company and give the money back to shareholders.  Ignore the experts. Correlation and causation are not necessarily the same thing.

Rich and famous often equals “lucky.”

Number Two. Customers can’t tell you what they need.  If you ask customers they’ll say give us better, faster, cheaper, and status quo.  Build the product YOU want to use, and that you think the world can use.  Fact: Nobody told Apple to build the Macintosh…iPod…iPad…

Number Three.  Jump to the NEXT curve.  He then explained a simple but revealing analogy.  Ice 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0

Ice 1.0 was when ice harvesters sawed blocks of ice out of the lake when it was frozen and then distributed it.

Ice 2.0 saw the advent of the ice factory, so you could get ice any time of the year, and didn’t have to be in a “cold” city.

Ice 3.0 saw the advent of the “ice box,” better known as the refrigerator.

The ice harvesters did NOT embrace the ice factory, and the ice factories did NOT embrace the refrigerator.  Yet, all served the same purpose: Keeping your food fresh.

So, if you want to be successful, put your solution to the problem in terms of the benefits, NOT the process you use to get there.

Number Four.  The biggest challenges beget the best work.  Ram a big challenge down the throat of your employees.  The challenge Steve Jobs gave us was to compete with IBM.  Remember the print ad we ran. It’s headline was” “Welcome, IBM.  Seriously.” IBM was a magnificent competitor, and it was a great challenge for us to take them on.

So, find a mighty opposite for yourself.

Number Five. Design counts.  Don’t think it’s all about price.  Most people also care about design, and Apple’s premium pricing has proven that over and over again.

Number Six.  Use big graphics and big fonts.  Consider this slide when Jobs introduced the Windows version of iTunes.  It had a massive Windows logo, then underneath the following headline: “The best Windows app ever written.

Number Seven.  Changing your mind is a sign of intelligence, not a sign of stupidity or lack of conviction.  When things change, you have to react and reform.  Steve Jobs demonstrated this when he evolved from accepting no independent applications for the iPhone one year, to fully embracing them the next.

He saw which way the wind was about to blow, and he realized to bolster the iPhone app ecosystem, he needed to open it up to outside developers.

Number Eight.  Value is NOT equal to price.  Nobody ever bought an Apple piece of equipment because it was the cheapest thing.

Number Nine.  A players hire A+ players.  You should always be hiring someone as good or better than you in your own field.

Number Ten.  Real CEOs can demo.  They can run the product, show the product, build stuff with the product.

They don’t hand it over to someone else.  They DO the demo.

Number Eleven. Real entrepreneurs ship.  Don’t worry, be crappy.

Imagine you were the first refrigerator company.  The first fridge had to be better than the best ice factory, but it didn’t have to be perfect.

Once you jump curves, that’s when the real excitement begins. When you ship, you’ll learn more in two weeks from your customers than you will sitting in a dark room.

Number Twelve.  Marketing equals unique value.  Pets.Com was a classic example where that rule did NOT apply.

You have a dog.  You have a cow.  You kill the cow, put it in the can, and give it to the dog.

That was the Pets.com business model.  Shipping dog food. The problem was, it’s dead cows in cans. It weighed a lot.  It was less convenient and just as expensive to order it via the Internet.  It wasn’t unique.  It wasn’t valuable.

And finally, number thirteen. (Never mind Guy said there would only be twelve).

Some things need to be believed to be seen.

But sometimes you also need to believe in things before you will see them.

Greetings from the City by the Bay.

It’s the second full day of the IBM SmartCamp Global Finals. I had a wonderful dinner last evening with some old friends at the Marine Memorial Club overlooking the city skyline, and this morning, woke up bright and early prepared for day 2 here at the Bently Reserve.

IBM VP Mike Riegel's motivational talk to the IBM SmartCamp entrepreneurs gathered in San Francisco this morning, explaining just WHY IBM invests in its global entrepreneur program.

After a nice continental breakfast and some early morning networking, IBM’s Deborah Magid handed the discussion over to IBM’s Mike Riegel, a vice president for ISV and Developer Relations.

Riegel, who started his career in government and later worked at a startup himself, explained to the audience of entrepreneurs, mentors, press, and bloggers what was behind IBM’s investment in the Global Entrepreneur Program, which launched in April 2010, and later the IBM Smart Camp competition.

First, Riegel explained, a significant portion of IBM’s revenue is derived through its relationship with Business Partners, which come in all shapes and sizes

Second, venture capital-backed companies essentially compose the next generation of IBM’s ecosystem.

Third, through its relationships with the VC and entrepreneurial community, IBM finds new innovation, invention, and entrepreneurialism, not to mention new strategic insights and the identification of new business models and technologies.  And, this past year, IBM has expanded its focus do this in markets around the globe, in particularly in emerging economies such as Brazil and India.

Fourth, and fact: VC-backed companies account for 1,500 of IBM’s Business Partners and over 30 acquisitions by IBM in the past 10 years.

So as IBM looks out at the market opportunity for some of its key investment areas — business analytics, cloud computing, smarter planet, smarter cities — well, you’re looking at several hundred billions of dollars of market opportunity, and the capital that will be invested to help provide those solutions will come from IBM, its business partners, and the new types of entrepreneurial businesses generated through the likes of the IBM Smart Camp and Global Entrepreneur program.

When IBM launched the program in April 2010, it opened its doors and resources to entrepreneurs looking to bring their next big idea to market.  But then it went one step forward launching the IBM Smart Camp finals, and winner Streetline, IBM’s Global Entrepreneur of the Year in 2010, is a good case study of the potential these startups demonstrate.

Streetline was focused on “the art of the possible,” developing a very specific application that helped people find a parking space in major metropolitan areas.

In November 2010, Streetline won the first IBM SmartCamp competition.  Its VC mentorship began in December of that year, and by June 2011 Streetline had raised $15M in a “B” round of funding.

By August, it had integrated its solution with IBM’s Cognos software, and then completed an integrated IBM-Streetline solution.

It was announced to the market in September 2011, and the IBM sales force started selling the “Advanced Parking Solution” by IBM IBM-Streetline.

From IBM Smart Camp winner to IBM market solution in less than a full calendar year.