Bad Signs

[mishalak]

I worry about companies that start advertising with no apparent reason, no product to promote. Especially if it is eye candy and feel good sorts of things. Like the Enron we're changing the energy world commercials without any apparent point. We all know what happened to them. Or the AT&T commercials about science fiction possibilities like paying tolls without slowing down. And the company that will bring it to you? AT&T, who later had to restate their earnings.

So now Hewlett Packard is doing commercials about vague nano technology promises. Should we be worried?

I'm going to bed soon, big headache and still stuffed up.

Comments

[peteyoung.livejournal.com]

The Honda radio/TV commercials a year ago were basically productless ads, but I rather liked them because they were vaguely science fictional:

Ever wondered what the most commonly used
word in the world is? “OK”. Man’s favourite word is one that means ‘alright’, ‘satisfactory’, ‘not bad’. So why invent the light bulb when candles are OK? Why make lifts, if stairs are OK? If Earth’s OK why go to the moon? Clearly not everybody believes OK is OK. We don’t. And we were wondering: what would the world be like if its favourite word wasn’t OK? What if we could change it? What if the word was: “What If?”

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

Oh certainly some productless ads are very fun. Much more interesting that yet another ad of a car making tight curves on a mountain road.

I really loved this sort of HP/US Postal ad where it went, "Neither rain, nor wind, nor snow, or sudden loss of gravity, or disgruntled robots made of used washing machines, or black holes destroying all of reality shall keep the faithful mail carrier from his appointed rounds."

I'm just saying that I worry about companies when they do things like this. There seems to be a high correlation between this and poor financial performance.