After many years in leadership roles at media agencies, Jordan Bitterman will move to the brand and media side as chief marketing officer of The Weather Co., the IBM-owned company said Wednesday.
Bitterman brings extensive knowledge of how media companies can drive efficiencies in the data-driven milieu.
He said The Weather Co. is in a unique position because of its troves of rich location and weather data backed by IBM’s computing chops. Bitterman hopes to leverage that data to transform The Weather Co. into a platform that provides valuable data to brands.
“There are very few companies that have the combination of assets this company has,” he said. “We’re a mobile company and a data company, and social, mobile and data makes up today’s platform in many regards.”
While The Weather Co. remains a standalone brand within IBM, its relationship with the computing giant is critical to that mission.
“Make no mistake, we are part of IBM,” Bitterman said.
The Weather Co. team works closely with Watson, IBM’s artificial intelligence computing platform, to power ad campaigns driven by cognitive computing. Watson and The Weather Co. recently rolled out their first campaign for Campbell’s Soup. But IBM is just beginning to explore what’s possible with The Weather Co.’s data, Bitterman said.
“Data has become critical to brands,” he said. “If we’re in the second inning of the data usage game, then we really want to innovate in that area and apply it to IoT, location, weather, etc.”
For IBM, Bitterman is the latest in a string of big hires from the advertising world. The computing giant recently snagged former AOL President Bob Lord as its chief digital officer.
