IBM Blade Center

Today I'm going to veer off the entertainment a bit and discuss an interesting campaign I stumbled on for IBM. What caught my eye was the banner add which featured a full video in a 300x250 ad with no branding whatsoever. Just the tag/url ibm.com/outwithcables
When you visit the site you see a much longer version of the video which really plays up that this ball of cables is almost alien-like, and in my opinion the video is too long, especially since i saw it already in the ad. What caught my eye was the call to action to "Watch Very Short Demos with Ned." This is done in a fun 1950's style instructional video format. I liked and disliked the content in this area however. The first video was kind of funny, it showed how to reduce power costs and featured a box fan in lower corner, the tech slides the blade into the server and turns the fan off. Simple and to the point and mildly humorous. There is another one where an It manager asks if they upgraded the infrastructure and then he simply plugs in the blade which is also quite humorous. There are probably about 20 some videos in there which promote the features of the product. Where the piece fails a bit i think is the payoff of these videos. With the exception of the two mentioned, the rest are mild variations of the tech plugging in the blades. If they had been more creative and come up with some more minor variations it would encourage users to explore them all and spend more time on the site. The overall concept of 15 second videos to showcase how simple the product is to use is great, the execution could have used a bit more finesse.

http://www.ibm.com/outwithcables

Rating: 8