IBM is Thinking with its Dipstick

Until last night, I loved the latest "I'm an IBMer" campaign from IBM.

The spots feature what we believe to be real IBM employees of many nationalities and ethnicities, all united in the goal of "building a smarter planet."

But last night I noticed that in the latest addition to the campaign, one of the IBM team members looked quite familiar. Upon closer inspection, it appears to be the whip-happy Scotsman from the Castrol "Think with your dipstick, Jimmy" TV spots.

There is a disconnect here. Actors often appear in several commercials at once, and I've got no problem with that. My problem here is the nature of the IBM commercial. Although, the bearded gentleman never announces that he works for IBM, the message of the campaign is that IBM's vision for a smarter planet is contingent upon each of its team members fulfilling their individual roles.

I can see how this mistake got made -- the actor chosen looks positively professorial and was born to wear a white lab coat. The lesson we learn here is that casting managers should ensure the actors they hire don't have a recent body of work that could take away from the message they are currently communicating.

The IBM and Castrol ads are here and here.

Thanks to Matt McCoy for the side by side screenshot.

The Late, Great, Paul Rand On Design.

I'm no art critic, but I'm a big fan of the legendary designer Paul Rand.

Rand is well known for his vast body of identity work including the logos he did for IBM, UPS, Westinghouse, Enron, and NeXT. One of my personal faves was the Ford re-design he did in the sixties that the company never implemented.

Rand was one of the first designers to communicate the importance of design as a competitive advantage in business. He was also a fount of timeless wisdom, offering up many commonsense nuggets over the course of his career. One of my personal faves: "Don't try to be original. Just try to be good."