Bryan Casey - Growth Systems: How IBM Turned One Organic Success Into Ten

Transcript

1. Bryan Casey VP, Digital Channels @ IBM Growth systems How we turned one win into ten December 4-5 2025 Durham, NC
2. Growth Systems I’m Bryan Casey, VP of Digital Channels at IBM Bryan has been at IBM for 15 years and today leads IBM’s Inbound program, an organic growth team focused on search, email, podcasting and YouTube. Over the course of Bryan’s career he has led teams and missions across content marketing, social, comms, analytics and demand gen. Among the digital marketing community, he is perhaps most well-known for deleting 80% of the marketing content off ibm.com. About Me
3. Part 01 – Irrational behavior Part 02 – Growth systems Today’s Agenda 01 02 03 04 Organic channels are still chronically underinvested relative to traditional campaigns and advertising. We’ll cover how IBM built its organic programs and what we think we are really building. Part 03 – IBM’s journey Part 04 – Learnings Growth Systems
4. Part 01 Why do most companies struggle with owned channels? Growth Systems
5. There are structural issues More comfortable passing through publisher infra than building/owning it Advertiser vs publisher mentality 01 More comfortable with agency “creative” teams than staff “creator” teams Creative vs creator teams 02 More comfortable modeling campaigns than infrastructure CapEx vs OpEx 03 Growth Systems
6. Everything is downhill of advertiser mentality Everything is top down from the campaign, creative and message vs being bottoms up from platform and channel laws. Focused on passing through 3rd party (publisher or tech company) infrastructure and channels vs. owned audience. Scale execution expected immediately vs compounding over many years and across many channels. Growth Systems 01 02 03
7. IBM built our owned program by beating advertiser KPIs by 10x Growth Systems Demand Cost per response Awareness Cost per impression, visit, minute of engagement Progression Response to lead & win
9. Growth Systems What is this thing? Every day we learn new things about what we’re building and how it all ought to work better together
10. Part 02 Growth systems Growth Systems
11. The Magic of Disney We need to find a new term to describe Disney’s Synergy Map. My best attempt so far is “Growth systems.” Growth Systems
12. More than “omnichannel” Every “node” is atomically impressive. Great movies. Great theme park. The “Magic of Disney” is that every component compounds the value, durability and reach of Disney. Two dimensions of TAM and share of wallet expansion: channels & programming/IP Everything in the system compounds the impact of the system. Every new node accelerates, and is accelerated by, its complements. Every new node in the system creates new institutional capabilities within the system, which strengthens the overall system. Growth Systems 01 02 03
13. Turning the messy middle into a core competency When Disney makes a new “where will we play” decision they can use existing IP and distribution for “how they win” and their existing capabilities to accelerate success. Growth Systems
14. Part 03 Our approach at IBM Growth Systems
15. Growth Systems We started from nowhere The ”Inbound” program was started in 2019 Around here
16. In the beginning, we explained Explainers on ibm.com serving as pillar pages of topic clusters Video versions of those same explainers on IBM Tech YouTube channel Growth Systems
17. How we made the case Growth Systems Failed pilots Made legitimate efforts to integrate this work into existing teams and processes Competitive & financial data Showed competitive traffic volume & value stats to leadership Fully contained programs Made initial business case to build small team (2 ppl + $250k)
18. The system was in motion These two programs became the backbone of broad audience reach, and the foundation of key capabilities, but were not enough. A new core SEO team, program (and eventually infra) was powering a shared backlog across web and YouTube. We created and improved important capabilities on the team, including a fledgling journalism team and a/v. The programs accelerated one another. We would cross-link and embed video inside articles, which improved engagement. Growth Systems 01 02 03
19. Inspired by our own team Growth Systems Awards 
 Casey Journalism Center’s Award for Meritorious Journalism NY State Bar Association John Peter Zenger Award Webby Award for online journalism MacDowell Fellowship recipient Sundance Lab finalist B2B Shorty Award Writers Guild of America Award finalist Anthologized in Best American Science & Nature Writing Crossroads Poetry Journal contest winner Pacifica Literary Review contest winner
20. We became a news team A newsletter covering industry + IBM news, sent twice a week Weekly news shows on AI (Mixture of Experts) and Security (Security Intelligence) Growth Systems
21. How we made the case Growth Systems Nurture & subscription Traffic volume was high but audiences not sticky, we need subscription “products” Strong economics Existing inbound program vastly more cost efficient than paid, this will accelerate us Relevance AI cycle is moving too fast and too omnipresent that we need more things to get us into daily mix
23. Anatomy of the Think newsletter Growth Systems
24. From conceptual to practical We started developing tutorials around practical use cases And made video versions of those same tutorials on IBM Tech YouTube channel Growth Systems
25. How we made the case Growth Systems Path to product This content provided a logical journey from learning about a topic to understanding how IBM can help Audiences A large % of IBM’s total addressable market was not being effectively served by existing approach
26. “Hubs” as a force multiplier The explainers provide distribution for the tutorials. Moving from stand-alone articles and tutorials to hubs increased engagement, time on site and return visitor traffic. Made returning visitors a very meaningful part of our traffic. Growth Systems
28. We’re building a compounding growth system We have a more dynamic and more robust engine than we did 18 months ago, with more paths to a “permanent” growth mix. Every single “node” in the system is both accelerated by its peer programs and improves the impact/value of those programs. Every channel has strengths and weaknesses, the machine only delivers at full potential when it operates as a system. Growth Systems 01 02 03
29. Our steps to success Growth Systems Target an initial foothold Beat existing program KPIs Use distribution & capabilities for next best node Spread dev costs over multiple form factors Every channel accelerates its complements String programs together into E2E demand motions
30. Part 04 Lessons learned Growth Systems
31. Inbound, not SEO Growth Systems Big tent Inbound is a mission, not a team, and became a community of interest across IBM Positioning The job is to increase IBM’s reach while lowering our CAC Scope We always planned to add channels and motions beyond SEO
32. The “fall plan chart” Budgets are zero sum. We created a way to “clean trade” between advertising and inbound. We commit to all their same KPIs, but deliver with greater efficiency. Growth Systems
33. Growth Systems Financial model education We spent a lot of time teaching people how to think about how and why this type of efficiency was possible.
34. Operating model Growth Systems No ad hoc bs Alignment is expensive. Plan in bulk on a quarterly basis. Then just ship non-stop. No “shared resources” Team members and budget either hard line or ring fenced to mission. No content strategists If you don’t write, you’re not on the team. Creators are journos and devs.
35. Comms (blogs rule) Growth Systems Killer lines/stats Every new thing should have one or two simple, memorable stats that frame the issue. Control the narrative Set a new agenda or control the response to external events External recognition Highlight external validation to increase credibility.
36. Quieting the noise on LLMs Educated the company about AI search. Demonstrated expertise of the team. Used it as an opportunity to accelerate our agenda. Growth Systems
37. “#1 client experience problem in IBM” The easiest way to drive big change is to communicate in a super simple way that big change is required. Growth Systems
38. Competitive data from 3rd parties Leadership is always suspicious of big claims. External validation is very helpful for credibility. Growth Systems
39. Engagement & motivation Growth Systems Change IBM Yes we want to hit numbers but really what we want is to change a great company. Be the best If we are going to show up to work every day, we might as well play to win. Impact the market Play a positive, and aspirationally essential role in the tech media ecosystem.
40. Make sure your creators know about their best links! Growth Systems
41. And of course… a great SEO team Growth Systems
42. Thank you! Email us at bfcasey@us.ibm.com if you have more questions.