They're DOING it again... -- MIDRANGE-L


IBM and their idiotic ads...

This time it was the cutsey "E-business?  What's that?" ad.  Y-know, the ad
that's in black & white, and has loads of people at places of business
saying, "E-business?  I dunno what THAT is."  Then the IBM logo comes up
and the notice "read the trade press" comes up underneath the logo.

This is supposed to motivate me?  The only thing it does do is annoy me.  I
don't want to be told to read even more.  I gotta read enough as it is.
(The only thing that keeps my attention in the ad is the music anyway.)

If the AS/400 is supposed to be IBM's big e-business machine (and that's
just a guess here, based on the naming of the new "e-series" machine), why
don't they SHOW us a quick and dirty example of what e-business is?  That's
what MickeySoft do with their NT ads-- show us what people are doing with
NT.

Instead of having Denis Leary being snotty or people you don't care about
scratching their heads in confusion, or Infiniti-style advertising (not
showing a product), why not actually show the box in action?

Fer example, say there's a guy ordering stuff via the web.  At home or in
the office, it doesn't matter.  What's he ordering?  I dunno, sixty boxcars
or a crate of Guatemalan Fruitbats or his weekly groceries or something.

When he hits the Order This Stuff button, the camera, through the magic of
computer animation, jumps into the machine, and we follow the order as it
screams down the phone line at extremely high speed like a comet (with
little pictures of other callers going "WOW, lookit that call go!").

When the order comes out at the destination machine, the camera's point of
view jumps out of the phone line, across some computer gutz, and then we're
outside the machine, panning past the IBM AS/400 logo that's on an actual
AS/400, in an OFFICE fer heaven's sakes!

In the background, there are people working, using the AS/400 to process
the order.  When the order gets processed, it gets stuffed back into the
AS/400 and the order flies into the warehouse where eager little worker
bees are anxious to stuff the ordered goods into a
truck/van/helicopter/supertanker and ZIP!  It's off!

The next thing known by our guy what placed the order three paragraphs ago
is that there's a knock at the door.  There's a jumpsuited guy with a
clipboard, a smile, and the kit that's been ordered.  Our ordering fellow
is relieved that everything happened so quickly and efficently.  He's a
happy guy.

(This is why I'd never have a career in advertising, some amateur always
trying to tell me how to do my job.  With programming, people are still
impressed enough to go, "Ohhhhhhhhhh... wow...")

Oh, and on the NT VS. OS/400 debate:
Anyone remember how bad CPF was when it came out?  YYYYYEEEEEE!  NT reminds
me very much of CPF.  It's not NT that's going to be a success... I'm
betting it's going to be the thing after NT that's going to be a success.

Anyway, that's my monday morning rant.  Thanks folks...

Look after yerselves...

-Ed, Doc, the new Echobelly album is disappointing...


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