Ads are one way company communicate with people. As any communication, even when if possible false or misleading, it always leaks some truth. At the very least, it tells us what the other one wants to say.
With that in mind, let’s compare two IBM ads, one from the 60’s and one from the present, and draw a line to foresee where the industry is going.
To start, marvel at IBM’s 1967 tour of force ‘Paperwork Explosion’:
The aesthetic is overpowering, it seems it came straight out of a Mad Men episode. It speaks of a very complex time, and yet much simpler than today. Paperwork seems like a necessary evil, something to manage at best as we can. Completely opposed to today’s mantra of ‘data is the new oil‘.
But at that moment it seems insurmountable. The video paints a bleak reality. They need to do all this paperwork, and there is not enough time nor people to do it.
How can this be solved? In the best American way, we confront an explosion, followed by a wise farmer.
Look at him, chilling with a pipe in the middle of a corn field, while dropping these words of wisdom:
Seems to me we could use some help.
How can we argue with that? Obviously, IBM can help us, and it gives us an strategic slogan:
Machines should work; People should think.
It is great. The overall vibe is that IBM will provide a machine for paperwork. Someone will have to drive it, and that human will be much more productive, leaving time to think. That time will be needed though, someone has to understand the machine, and there were no YouTube tutorials nor UX seminars back then…
Let’s continue. Half a century later, what is IBM doing?
How has time changed things. It is difficult to see where machines end and people begin. The thinking seems to be shared between both, and people are called smart for working with smart machines. They are integrated.
But if machines are doing part of the thinking, what are people doing with their extra time?
Well, if you walk through the playlist a new theme appears: they are all chilling like the farmer, and they all care about how they impact others.
Those are IBM’s giant ad footsteps. Where are they leading to?
Well the next logical step is for machines to do what we are doing right now.
Caring with us.
How are machines caring for you right now? How do you imagine they will care in the future?