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While watching the stiller game (steelers to you non-natives) I was stopped by a commerical i didn't mute right away...

It starts with this semi-scary looking young blonde haired kid. Then all these serious grownups telling him things from fashion - physics. And the entire time the "narrator" of this ad is talking like he is a machine.. "Look at him, he's obsorbing the knowledge" etc...

then at the end... it just says LINUX i was like, no Fn way. Is this a first step towards busting greenhorns chops!? I hope so, what with the TCPA and all, this was great to see. I have never seen a Linux ad that was so compelling, let along not in a magazine but on a highly watched channel! What are your thoughts?

I was wanting to see it. I guess it'll be in high rotation. What station was it on?

It was on channel 6 here in pittsburgh, thats CBS im pretty sure.

It's actually an IBM ad (I hope the irony is not lost on anyone). More explanation at internetnews.com

It's running during the CBS NFL broadcast; I'm sure it'll show up elsewhere as well. Worth noting that several (all?) of the people are Well Known or Notable in some way or another. Muhammad Ali is almost unrecognizable (he's got some facial hair) but his voice is unmistakable.

this site has every commercial/ad that you could ever want to see again...

has very amazing database on all ads too... like who was the artists/song
of certain commercials and so on...

it used to be a free-site, but they got so popular, you are now required
to be a member to view/watch/download any of their ads... amazing site
nonetheless:

http://www.adcritic.com/

check it out...

Anybody else feel like buying one of the new F150's?...


Me neither (Only peeps who watched the first quarter of any football game yesterday will get that)

Can you use Linux as a selling point in an advertisement? Seems like since it belongs to no one, you shouldn't be able to use it as featured part of your ad. That was focused solely on Linux. Anyway...

http://rxns-rbn-sea01.rbn.com/ibmpdc/pd ... 90_med.mpg

The original video is in ASF format, but it's better not to support MS file formats

Or just go here: http://www-3.ibm.com/e-business/doc/con ... odigy.html

About the what and the why: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/cms ... sid=164838

Player Hater wrote:

Can you use Linux as a selling point in an advertisement? Seems like since it belongs to no one, you shouldn't be able to use it as featured part of your ad. That was focused solely on Linux. Anyway...

sure ya can.. they do/did/still doing the same for MILK advertisements.
they are not selling a specific brand/model/make, yet...just selling MILK.

same with LINUX.

thegleek wrote:

sure ya can.. they do/did/still doing the same for MILK advertisements. they are not selling a specific brand/model/make, yet...just selling MILK.

same with LINUX.

Or "Beef... It's What's for Dinner!"... or any of a number of other similar advertising campaigns.

I get what you guys are saying. I'm thinking about something a little different though. With the BEEF and MILK campaigns, they are selling BEEF and MILK, those are the products being offered for sale. With this Linux thing, you aren't really buying Linux, you are buying IBM machines that run Linux.

Couldn't some other company come along and do the same exact ad but with their company logo at the end instead of IBM's? They are basically selling the same free stuff that IBM is advertising, what would be wrong with that?

I understand that this is a big up for the Linux world but I dont get why they did it. Anyone can have Linux for free, why advertise that. They should be promoting their machines. Thats part of the reason IBM stock took a huge nosedive in the mid 90's is cuz they have some great advertising but you never know what they are really selling.

Player Hater wrote:

I get what you guys are saying. I'm thinking about something a little different though. With the BEEF and MILK campaigns, they are selling BEEF and MILK, those are the products being offered for sale. With this Linux thing, you aren't really buying Linux, you are buying IBM machines that run Linux.

I think it is a bit more subtle than that... they are trying to increase awareness of Linux in the marketplace. And since they are a major vendor of hardware that runs Linux, they will reap a correspondingly large reward when people switch to Linux.

Couldn't some other company come along and do the same exact ad but with their company logo at the end instead of IBM's? They are basically selling the same free stuff that IBM is advertising, what would be wrong with that?

Aside from the fact that the ad itself is probably copyrighted, there would be nothing wrong with that at all.

I understand that this is a big up for the Linux world but I dont get why they did it. Anyone can have Linux for free, why advertise that. They should be promoting their machines. Thats part of the reason IBM stock took a huge nosedive in the mid 90's is cuz they have some great advertising but you never know what they are really selling.

There are probably a number of reasons why they did it... of the top of my head:

- The reason I touched on above (i.e. what's good for Linux is good for IBM).

- It's pretty hard to make file/web server hardware exciting... and IBM is a decades-old company, still seen by many as the last major holdout in the "big iron" (mainframe) market. Maybe they are hoping that Linux will be seen as new and exciting... and by implication, IBM will be perceived as innovative and forward-looking.

- Reassure the public that they're not backing away from their commitment to Linux as a result the SCO lawsuit.

- Paint Linux as "the good guy", and (by inference) SCO as "the bad guy".

- All of the above?

Player Hater wrote:

Couldn't some other company come along and do the same exact ad but with their company logo at the end instead of IBM's? They are basically selling the same free stuff that IBM is advertising, what would be wrong with that?

I understand that this is a big up for the Linux world but I dont get why they did it. Anyone can have Linux for free, why advertise that...

They arent selling Linux, but the support for it (big $$ in support contracts). These commercials are likely targetted at companies, not end users. Yes, they can download the OS for free, but they need machines that are certified to run the OS and they like dealing with vendors who will support both the hardware and software.

IBM is obviously a big name vendor and have put a lot of resources into the development of Linux (which is rapidly growing, as we all know). They are trying to make thier name synonymous with Linux in the corporate world...