Programming Pauls of Wisdom

"reverse polarity Captain".

I have long hated IBM adverts. IBM is supposed to be a respected technology company, but its advertising (well advertising in the UK) is betraying either a mismatch between the real culture of the company and its projected image, or it has given up on technology (and the precision and science of associated with that) and simply become a consulting company with a famous name.

The advert hating started many years ago - a blue lit (naturally) boardroom, a slightly confused looking woman starts with "Our web site is down and we're losing 100,000 dollars an hour. What are you going to do" - and each person round the table explains how the designers are snoboarding in Aspen, the programmer started his own dot com etc. Till the punchline - "thats when it hits you- you should have gone to IBM."

Well, apart from the underlying prejudices (its a woman who cannot run a website), it just amazes me that anyone can think a website pulling in 8.7 *billion* pa (8700 hours a year) is not populated by dozens of sysadmins, programmers etc all on 24hour call, or most of all is run by someone who does not understand the business.
I mean would we see an advert suggesting that the head of 8.7bn MiningCorp would say "what, people, like you and me, but *under the ground* - Wow how do they breath?"

Its the lack of even cursory critical thought that annoys me - the advertisisers are looking for a particular emotional impact and so we shall bend consistency and intelligence to fit the emotions.

It is the corporate marketing equivalent of the plot Macguffin becoming the whole plot. Hitchcock used to say he needed a Macguffin to get the characters to run around and interact, like a ticking bomb, but the film was not about the ticking bomb. Sadly I remember an pointless episode of Star Trek Voyager I saw where the ship got sucked into "some kind of energy vortex" because something went wrong with their lasers, and then after worrying they were going to die, they reversed polarity on the lasers and hey it was all ok. An episode that was entirely Macguffin. Because the peril was clearly hand waved into being, it was not perilous. So the situation in which they are thrown because of the Macguffin must be in and of itself attractive or perilous or gripping. For example if the holodeck malfunctions and evil holo-creature kill the extras, they they must defeat the evil creatures, as if those creatures were really real, *before* finding the switch that turns off the projector. Being about to be eaten and then turning off the holodeck makes the previous peril irrelevant.

If an advert invents a peril (website down, losing money captain), it must defeat the peril on reality's own terms - someone must be in the engine room shouting "I cannae break the laws of economics Cap'n". But it must have worked for the ads have gotten worse, and less and less aimed at technically minded people - presumably for the avoidance of critical analysis.

A long running series of paper ads show clueless It managers using sticky tape to hold together two servers because "our applications do not talk to each other". But fear not - IBM can provide "ntegrated Messaging and Application Software, to solve these problems. youwahtawaht. That does not mean anything - you just reversed the polarity. An incantation spoken by the starship captain to cover up the fact the scriptwriter has not recognised the difference between Macguffin and plot.

Why do your apps not talk to each other? What is the output of one and why can the other not make use of it? Cant you translate between the two - what is the volume of traffic. Have you identifed 5 things you want the apps todo together? Have you asked what investment will be required. Have you thought?

Of course it is now much much worse. The latest IBM ad does not even involve technology. Or anything real at all. 3 "exec-types" all unveil their latest "thing" - covered in sensuous silky red material. We never see the 3 things, only the raptuorous applause of the press and the winning smiles - hire us and we will make you special. You and your special idea.

This is infantilisation. The entry of magic into the world of business. Not the good kind of magic you get in Paris on a summers night, no the childish, oral, say the right incantation, and the world changes to suit you kind of magic.

Accenture does it too - it is Business Process Outsourcing. Or "your people are too dumb to execute that wonderful strategy correctly, you are too incompetant to alter the culture and processs that are in the way of any decent ideas, and you are too lazy to put in the hard work to fix it. Pay us, we'll fire them for you and run it ourselves."

So now all I see are adverts not telling people that if you want to run a 8.7bn dollar business, you need to understand the market and world you operate in better than God, nope. Norsiree. IF you want to run a 8.7bn dollar business you had better call a meeting someday. Not even close. If you want to run a 8.7bn dollar business mouth the words "open mckinsey IBM Accenture sessame" and the red cloth will fall away, and people will think you are special.

Does this infantilsation matter? Do we care if overpaid CEOs, instead of doing real work, suck their thumbs and hire consultants and fantasise of adoring press launches where they are soooo special.?


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I remember watching the video of the leader of the July the 7 London underground bombers, not soon after I attended the memorial service outside Aldgate East tube.

I watched a perfectly ordinary looking bloke explaining in perfectly ordinary tones, how vile murder was justified because of his religious and political beliefs, or something Tony Blair did. But all I could hear and see in that ordinary face, and his ordinary eyes, just like all the other ordinary faces I see on the tube, were lyrics from Kurt Cobain - "I wanna be special, sooo fucking special ...."

posted by paul @ 5:30 PM