One Hundred Million Dollars

Thursday, June 12 2008

One thing I admire about IBM is their ability to simplify marketing messages using nice, big, round, easy-to-understand numbers.  I was reminded of this today when I saw the following headline:

IBM Commits $100 Million To Midmarket Cause

I swear they've thrown around that figure before, but couldn't remember where, so I put "IBM $100 million" into a search box, and was reminded of how truly disciplined the IBM PR machine really is (headlines as they appeared in press coverage)...

IBM Invests $100 Million in Collaborative Innovation Ideas

IBM Pledges $100 Million to Workplace on Linux

IBM to help build $100 million supercomputer center

IBM to invest $100 million in IT solutions for Life Sciences research

IBM Pledges $100 Million to Aid Partners

IBM to Spend $100 Million on Mainframes

IBM invests $100 million in usability

IBM to invest $100 million over two years in Indian labs

IBM to Spend $100 Million in 2006 to Drive Express Offerings at SMB Shops

IBM to invest $100 million in 'Blue Gene' supercomputer

This list alone sums to over $1 billion, including today's annual midmarket commitment announce - no data on what kind of return they saw, but just for fun, I put "IBM $1 billion" in the search box to see of we could up the ante a little...

IBM to spend $1 billion on Linux in 2001

IBM Allocates $1 Billion to Advance "Green" Technology and Services

IBM Shifting $1 Billion to Services R&D

IBM will spend $1 billion to challenge Microsoft

IBM bets $1 billion on information management

What's another $5 billion?  And the list goes on and on.  When the PR machine kicks it into gear, message consistency matters, but this is a little ridiculous.