IBM’s CCO & SVP of Marketing and Communications, Jonathan Adashek

Jonathan Adashek is the Chief Communications Officer and Senior Vice President of Marketing and Communications at IBM. Before joining IBM, Jonathan was at Renault Nissan Mitsubishi Alliance in Paris, as well as Nissan Motor Co. in Yokohama, Japan, and prior to that had stints at Microsoft and Edelman. 

One of Jonathan's first roles was as a special assistant at the White House before becoming director of the national delegate strategy for the John Kerry presidential campaign.

At IBM, Jonathan leads a team of 800+ professionals in more than 170 countries with responsibility for IBM’s global communications, corporate citizenship, and CSR, as well as strategic events and social media.

Without further ado, please enjoy this conversation with IBM CCO and SVP of Marketing and Communications Jonathan Adashek. 

Here are some key takeaways from this conversation with Jonathan. 

Simplify your message. As a company, IBM has thousands of products, services, and solutions, and prior to Jonathan coming on board, there was an overwhelming amount of different marketing and communications campaigns for these different products. This caused confusion among the general public over what IBM really stood for as a brand. One of Jonathan's first orders of business was to significantly simplify IBM's message into one slogan: “Let's Create.” A brand can only get so much attention which is why it's important not to diffuse your brand's message across a number of separate campaigns. Furthermore, emotional statements like “Let's Create” can transcend product features and benefits and get to the heart of your company's real mission, which is way more effective than focusing on the products. 

Admit failure early & honestly. Jonathan mentioned committing an epic failure at IBM recently. Instead of blaming someone else, shirking behind it, or attempting some sort of internal coverup, he sent out an all-employee message outlining what had happened while owning up to it. He claimed the experience was more cathartic than scary and set a standard for radical honesty at the company that was unprecedented. Embracing humanity on an executive level with this kind of honesty is the foundation for creating extremely healthy and effective company cultures. 

Be client zero; practice what you preach. All products and tech solutions conceived of and created by IBM must be used internally as a standard for their creation. Jonathan states that clients and customers will not stand by any other standard. By being client zero, IBM is able to only create products and solutions that they stand by after a lot of trial and error. This ensures a level of trust with customers that simply cannot be bought.

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Produced by Simpler Media