COLOGNE, GERMANY - 14 Sep 2016: IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced THINK Marketing, a new one-stop destination for marketers to gain knowledge, learn skills and ultimately drive a digital transformation within their business.

Designed to help Chief Marketing Officers (CMO) and their teams build proficiency and experience, THINK Marketing delivers news and thought leadership content from the industry's top marketing influencers and news outlets. The news content links to learning materials, demonstrations, and trials from a variety of vendors around topics such as campaign management, digital marketing and analytics. Through these assets, marketers can gain a deeper knowledge and, when ready, match their needs with solutions from IBM and more than sixty marketing technology companies from around the globe including Sprinklr, Mirakl and MediaMath.

THINK Marketing will rapidly grow to include new industry specific content, collections of content on additional marketing functions and double the number of third-party solutions. THINK Marketing will also include a developer marketplace where start-ups and developers can virtually brainstorm, try solutions and also create and bring to market new cognitive and cloud apps that address important marketing challenges.

Helping to direct THINK Marketing visitors through this experience is IBM's Watson technology. THINK Marketing currently relies on Watson APIs such as AlchemyLanguage and Conversation, which ingest thousands of pieces of content, conduct a semantic analysis and recommend relevant content. In the future Watson’s cognitive learning capabilities will get to know people’s interests, marketing aptitude and unique business challenges, all based on their collective experience with the platform. With this insight it will continually present them with information that aligns with their needs.

For example, if a marketer reads an article on "Pokemon Go," THINK Marketing could recommend articles on mobile personalization, present a case on the growing role that big data analytics is playing in the video game industry and then direct them to solutions that can help their business, whether an IBM offering or one from an IBM Partner. As Watson learns and the site content grows, users will receive recommendations on a greater array of content including related courses, advanced learning opportunities, videos and industry events.

“Marketers are besieged with solutions and opinions for the best path to success. THINK Marketing offers a view of the best news, thought leadership, education and solutions,” said Harriet Green, General Manager, Watson IoT, Commerce and Education, IBM. “As part of this commitment to providing relevant, expert guidance, we are also training Watson to provide customized recommendations for solutions that put companies on the course for business transformation.”

THINK Marketing is the first in a series of industry and professional hubs that IBM will launch over the next 12 months. Led by new Chief Digital Officer Bob Lord, these hubs are part of a continued focus on making enterprise-ready products and services available to any company looking to innovate with cloud and cognitive technologies, including start-ups, developers and entrepreneurs. The hubs will also offer extended learning for developers and a marketplace where they can monetize their APIs and apps.