IBM Tees up a New Audience—Consumers—with a Masters Watch Party in NYC

May 1, 2026
5:45 pm

Behind the scenes, IBM helps power some of the world’s biggest sports properties, and that means fans often interact with its tech, but not the brand itself. So during this year’s Master’s Tournament, of which IBM is a 30-year partner, the b-to-b company teed up a strategy designed to expand its audience beyond customers and clients, and into the consumer realm.

Enter: Masters at Madison Square Park, a public watch party hosted April 9-12 that brought the action from the fairway in Augusta, GA, to New York City.

Armed with an AI-powered golf simulator, Masters-themed f&b from Shake Shack, photo ops, exclusive merch and a tournament-long viewing experience hosted in the park—just steps from its flagship office—IBM took a swing at demystifying its latest technology for consumers. (The brand also maintained its tradition of bringing c-suite clients to Augusta for a weekend of hospitality.)

The high-tech golf sim, built with IBM watsonx, served as a digital replica of an iconic hole from the Masters and drew 45- to 60-minute lines throughout the weekend. The activation gave the brand a chance to demonstrate how its AI tools work in the context of golf, and delivered personalized data to each participant based on the AI-enhanced tracking of their shot, which could be compared to pro golfers’ stats.

“People are usually familiar with the brand, and they might have a neutral opinion, but they’re like, ‘I don’t know what these people do anymore,’” says Sarah Meron, chief communications and brand officer at IBM. “So these pop-up activations give us the opportunity to make that very tangible in a fun way that isn’t a sales pitch. No one is on-site buying our technology at these events, but we certainly know we’re able to shift a lot of perceptions about what we do.”

Given that Masters at Madison Square Park was in the brand’s font yard, IBM also leveraged the event to engage clients that were in the area for meetings, and to unleash its own employees, who had a chance to interact with the type of people they don’t usually touch. Adding to the multifaceted approach was the attendance of about 40 invited editorial reporters.

While IBM is dedicated to expanding its reach and maximizing its sponsorships, however, it’s a b-to-b brand at the end of the day, Meron says. And that requires being judicious about where and when IBM shows up in a consumer-facing capacity. The end goal is always to educate consumers on its tech, so it’s all about quality over quantity.

And as the experiential industry continues to explode, and IBM activates in fast-paced cities like London and New York, she says it’s the brand’s unique and meaningful experiences that motivate consumers to actually stop and spend time engaging and learning in an era when brand activations are essentially “a dime a dozen.”

“Unless you deliver something that is truly high-value and unusual, people are just going to walk on by. They might take a sample. They might take a selfie if you have a cool backdrop. But they’re not really engaging with you, and you’re not shifting their perception,” Meron says. “Most of the people who walked up [to the Masters event] had no idea that we do all of this AI technology. Unless they’re walking away understanding that, it’s kind of not worth doing. That’s how we think about it.” Agency: George P. Johnson.