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What poor, misguided marketing executive at Gateway agreed to this crazy campaign by LB (a division of Leo Burnett) for its business-to-business efforts? It's called "Humanology" but it's stupidology in Gothamist's notebook (and we're Gateway users!). The campaign includes visuals of ears coming out of servers, hands coming out of laptops...it's great as some parody of slicked-up surrealism, but it's so painful as advertising.
Adweek on the campaign and includes this bit of voiceover from a TV spot: "If all you needed was technology, you wouldn't need us, the humans behind the technology." And the website's pop-up window about Humanolgy says, "A fundametnal belief. The hybrid of tehcnological savvy and human understanding. The heart of Humanology." Know what Humanology is? Not making up stupid names like Humanology and just giving good products at good prices with good service. Full stop.
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Oh geez... seriously, what a focus group driven dumb piece of ass. Speaking of which, will they be using a nice ass shot for any of their products?
Dude, this goes beyond focus groups... focus groups would have demanded wanting to know about good service. This is so high minded, it's just high. Hee, I'm thinking of Towelie from South Park... "wanna get hiiiigh?"
Ears make we want to buy new computers.
Human error is usually what's behind computer problems, right? So I say, Less Human, More Computers.
egad. it looks like something cooked up by the in-house marketers at a fortune 500 widget company for their annual national sales meeting in boca raton. printed up by document services in the basement. it is possible to kill someone with blandness? maybe there are subliminal messages? please?
The subliminal message is that the glory days of Leo Burnett (Tony the Tiger, etc.) are long long gone.
Instead of nice middle-America conservatism from a big white-bread Chicago agency, somebody there decided to serve up shit for a marketing campaign. The idea doesn't even work as a draft of an idea. It says nothing to me but "transporter accident".
Why "creativity" comes to mean picking through scraps for ideas, is beyond me.
Yeah, there is a reason that some unusual stuff "stands out". But here that reason is, among a lot of advertising that people are taking semi-seriously, is one that NO one would take seriously.
If Gateway really wanted the sales of their systems to go through the roof, they'd build a machine made strictly for surfing porn on the internet. And as an extension for this "Humanology" campaign, they could add two more visual: a schlong and a hand making the universal jerk-off gesture. At least then the whole campaign would at least make some sense.
Oh yeah...those 5 years of marketing classes at the community college are finally starting to pay off.