REBECA
MÉNDEZ

The IBM Brand Book was originally conceived to give IBM-ers internally a better understanding of the role and the value of the IBM brand, and how the employees are stewards of the brand’s continued growth and vitality. It is a personal message – a passport for each of IBM’s 200,000 plus employees – one that is carefully designed to express, in a combination of words, pictures and design, what the IBM brand can be if managed properly. Ultimately, the book should motivate and inspire the individual IBM employee to take responsibility for strengthening the IBM brand. In fact, the creative brief called for a tone that is ‘intelligent, inspiring, convincing, credible and approachable.’

To know your brand you need to live it. It is a culture you decide to subscribe to, and make part of the daily fabric of your life. Where advertising revolves all around aspiring ideals, branding is about the daily manifestation of the brand, in all its guises.

What designers do is turn strategy into story. Through visual means they bring communication to life for the audiences it serves.

I created this 100+ page book and its advertising campaign while I was creative director at Ogilvy & Mather’s Brand Integration Group in Los Angeles and New York. With strategist Adam Eeuwens, O&M Chief Creative Officer Chris Wall, artist Paul Davis and photographer Michael Powers.