For many marketers today, it’s easy to drown in the deep, dark lake of 24/7 information being continuously gathered from online sources: apps, websites, you name it. Using the cognitive technology of IBM Watson, you can extract, quickly and easily, the useful information from the background noise, allowing you more time and creativity to plan campaigns and strategic marketing for your customers, according to André König, co-founder at Opentopic Inc. Opentopic is one such firm that helps its clients, via the cognitive digital marketing platform powered by IBM Watson, to filter through the data.

König joined John Furrier (@furrier) and Dave Vellante (@dvellante), co-hosts of theCUBE*, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, during the IBM World of Watson event, held at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, NV. They discussed how Opentopic uses Watson, König’s thoughts on being an IBM client, and any advice he might have for other marketing companies considering a move into cognitive digital marketing.

Looking ‘under the hood’

Furrier asked how Opentopic deploys Watson. König said, “We have a cloud-based user interface, hosted on SoftLayer, that clients log into … on the customer side, [it’s using] natural language … image and video recognition.”

“So if I’m a publisher, for example, how does your SaaS platform get to their layer?” asked Vellante.

“[Publishers] come to us for data on specific topics, so they can find new data points that make their stories more interesting … that data comes from over 140,000 online data sources; many times, in publishing, they will add their own content,” explained König . “We have an overload of information, so by the time a customer comes to your website, 57 percent of customers have already made their buy decision. You have to understand customers [very quickly].”

Working with IBM

Asked about his experiences as an IBM customer, König replied that his company has due to IBM’s extensive product list, his company has many people from all different business lines and business units come speak to them at the IBM World of Watson event.

“And they’ve heard of us. And people really like our stuff … for a startup, it’s amazing,” he said. “IBM is a huge playground with no boundaries. It’s up to you to be proactive and go out there.”

König added that his company gets calls all day long from executives, not just marketing. “We want Watson; we may not know exactly what it is, but we like it. IBM is the ‘cool kid’ on the block,” he said.

Furrier asked for his thoughts and any advice on marketing that König might have for other companies that may be interested in cognitive digital marketing.

“My advice is simple: Start with a real problem that you have, a pain point you want to address. Start small, start with a pilot, work with a startup like us, and see how that works for you,” König said. He also advised, “Today, we can build stuff with Watson and Bluemix for you in a week. So if someone has a two-to-three-month integration period, stay away from it.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of IBM World of Watson 2016.

*Disclosure: IBM and other companies sponsor some IBM World of Watson segments on SiliconANGLE Media’s theCUBE. Neither IBM nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.

Photo by SiliconANGLE