IBM Chucklevision

I was in a cab earlier. An IBM branded cab. The seats were branded with IBM messages. It had Cabvision too (a TV in the back, for all you non-city folk), which was playing back-to-back IBM infomercials.

These mini-films were all five-minute documentaries (infomentaries? documercials?) about different implementations of IBM, from the New York Police Dept. to the PGA Tour to the Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Association.

The best 'short advertorial film' (complete with emotive music, expensive editing and full directorial credits) was the NYPD's. It was about the way an IBM datacentre helped the New York cops (cue broad Brooklyn accents, creased suits and massive moustaches) solve a violent robbery through cross-referencing the perp's tattoo with their database of other perps. (They used the word 'perp' a lot, which was great. This could, however, have been in my imagination.)

Picture, if you will, the NYPD chief (broad Brooklyn accent, creased suit, massive moustache) commenting on how IBM helped:

"We needed to catch the guy. It helped that we could track the perp down by his tattoo."

Then an IBM Metaverse Evangelist or VP of Imagineering pops up (well, they're paying, right?) and starts by saying:

"What we brought to the table was a clear differentiation through the leveraging of dataset synergies."

Nothing polarises the differences between tech management and the real world than listening to an NYPD cop and an IBM sales director talk about the same thing, I've decided.

By the way, I've just found the film on YouTube, and it's nothing like I remember. (And there's not one 'perp', unless you count 'perpetrator'.) But my points, I hope, are still valid... And the video poster reveals that the agency involved was OgilvyOne. Good work fellas.

Here's the PGA Tour one. And one about Avian Flu. I couldn't find the Wimbledon one, but am reliably informed that it actually featured a Metaverse Evangelist.