El Gaffney

Do Day: A Commercial or Two

I should have saved Sherlock for Do Day, but since I didn’t and I’ve been running around in the rain all day, I’m going to cop out a bit and pass along what I think are pretty strong spots our London office recently did for Honda.

Actually, as I was thinking about commercials that explicitly talk about “doing” (vs. commercials with a strong call to action), I couldn’t help but think about IBM’s recent campaign. So I went to find the latest spot I’ve seen called “Avatar,” which you can see here:

As much as I can’t help but take it personally that this is how most adult businesspeople view young professionals and our Web two dot zero ideas, I do admire that IBM (and agency) seems to really know its target. But as I looked for this video (and found a few that had been removed from YouTube), I also came across an interesting article on CNET showing IBM’s chief executive, Sam Palmisano in Second Life. In fact, it seems he has two avatars.

I read from an article that’s a little more than a year ago, “IBM foresees a sizable business in providing the software, computers, and chips that power 3-D worlds, and in advising clients on how to take advantage of them to market or sell products.” Now, either they are changing strategies (and beliefs). Or the point of the spot was to say that IBM can help you get more out of these virtual world opportunities. If it’s the latter, I have to say that message didn’t quite come through. Oh yeah, and young people explore, try, fail, learn fast, etc. etc. In short, we do!

Tags: action, genY, honda, ibm, wk