The company that was once IBM Watson Marketing has officially rebranded as ‘Acoustic’ and has issued a scathing blog post and Spotify playlist to mark its entry.
The rebrand has been a long time coming, after IBM sold the business to a private equity firm earlier this year then announced its strategy earlier this month.
And according to company CEO Mark Simpson, the new name fits in with its customer-first approach.
“Acoustic is the science of sound,” Simpson said. “We’re Acoustic because we listen and understand the human dynamics of problems to find solutions that make a difference.”
We are dreamers. We are hustlers. We are brilliant.
We are Acoustic.https://t.co/3uTorNA4E0#GoAcoustic #UnleashingBrilliance pic.twitter.com/Qf98YNoJP5
— Acoustic (@GoAcoustic) July 15, 2019
Simpson is extremely critical of the industry Acoustic is entering into, which is now congested with over 7,000 providers in the space.
“If you listen to marketers, you’ll hear that mediocrity is running rampant in our industry,” said Simpson.
“Current solutions are mediocre at best – clunky, disjointed and too complicated. Data can be a sinkhole, different tools can present you with contradictory views, and people barely have time to grab lunch much less be creative anymore.”
By being independent, the company can provide solutions that those platforms tied to the likes of Adobe and Salesforce can’t, according to the company.
“If you listen to many teams, you’ll often hear a kind of apathy can start to set in too. It can take forever to get approvals, fix a line of code, or even just commute to the office,” Simpson said.
“They can also let the spark get stamped out. Instead of getting beaten down by all this, we’re going to listen to our company’s challenges and pivot to solutions that help all of us do our jobs and serve our clients better.”
To mark its independence, Acoustic has added some aesthetic touches such as an italic serif font, “warmer blues and brilliant greens”, “circles and squares that reflect the interplay of art and science” and simplified product names.
The company has also released a Spotify playlist to mark its entry into the market, complete with everything from Bryan Adams to Daft Punk.
