New IBM Ad features Linux in a new light (NewsForge) [LWN.net]

Joe Barr takes a look at IBM advertising featuring Linux, in this NewsForge article. "It's a slick way to instruct the viewing audience on various aspects of Linux and the free/open source development memes. Alan Cox, currently on sabbatical from Red Hat and Linux kernel development to further his education, said of the ad "It's rather cool." Cox added that it is "perhaps more telling" that IBM made the ad available on its website in MPEG format as well as in Real and QT formats. Andrew Morton, the current number-two in the Linux hacker hierachy, found the ad "perhaps a little pretentious, but it's nice to see that IBM is keeping the faith."

New IBM Ad features Linux in a new light (NewsForge)

Posted Sep 8, 2003 20:45 UTC (Mon) by ken (subscriber, #625) [Link] (2 responses)

Downloaded watch it and Que??

I had to read the explanation to get it. Is this going to sell linux servers ??

Also did not recognize one single person the first time around.

New IBM Ad features Linux in a new light (NewsForge)

Posted Sep 8, 2003 22:48 UTC (Mon) by frazier (guest, #3060) [Link]

Will it sell linux servers? Yeah, most likely.

In terms of effectiveness of informing the audience, I thought the basketball ads with #12 (Linux) dunking the ball while the guys on the sideline explain that Linux plays for cheap because he loves the game were pretty darn good.

This ad will bring more additional name recognition to Linux. I do question how effective this ad will be, but think it will be somewhat effective anyway. It's attention getting, and "Linux" hangs on the screen for a while towards the end.

The most entertaining advertisements are many times not the most effective. This one has a bit of that, as there'll probably be people who don't remember who the kid is, but might remember that Ali and Penny Marshall spoke to him.

(on an unrelated note, the Newsforge article said the ad debuted during the US Open but I saw it during the Chiefs/Chargers NFL game scheduled before the US Open. Go Chiefs!)

New IBM Ad features Linux in a new light (NewsForge)

Posted Sep 11, 2003 2:41 UTC (Thu) by melauer (guest, #2438) [Link]

> I had to read the explanation to get it. Is this going to sell linux servers ??

I don't think that the point of this ad was to sell Linux servers per se. Note for
example that they didn't mention any specific products. It's more a matter of trying to
present the benefits of Linux in a manner which is understandable (e.g. "anything
[Linux] learns benefits us all") as well as attention-getting (it's an ad). You get the
sense of seeing an excerpt from a sci-fi movie, which is something that people can
understand and which they'll pay attention to. Throw in a wide variety of famous
people just in case the audience isn't paying attention yet (though this fits the
storyline as well). Since the clip feels like an excerpt from a sci-fi movie the
audience will hopefully approach if from the angle of "Okay, what exactly is going
on here, what's the plot?" Hopefully it should be clear how what they say about the
kid applies to Linux (that's the intent, anyway).

BTW, I have to feel sorry for that kid. Did ya' see how bored he looked? Maybe we
should get him an iPod? :)

cool but braindead frontpage

Posted Sep 11, 2003 10:59 UTC (Thu) by mdekkers (guest, #85) [Link]

The ad is cool, but the IBM US homepage is currently featuring an ad for the ad (heh) in a somewhat braindead manner - the tagline is "Learn how IBM is spreading the word about Linux to the Open Source Community and beyond" Spreading the word about about Linux? To the Open Source Community? I immediatly imagine a scenario where some IBM exec tells a marketing exec "tell them how we spread the word about linux and the open source community - they created it and we will spread the word about it" The marketing exec thinks "they created Linux? Can't be! that nice man from SCO told me so!"