Advertising Age: IBM’s Zany Viral Video Chief

Earlier this week AdAge reported on the case study I discussed on the use of humor in corporate web video.  I showed a few clips including one from our Smarter Planet campaign.  “Mainframe: The Art of the Sale” earned some great press coverage.  The San Francisco Chronicle blog “What are They Drinking in Armonk,” ZDNet compared it favorably against Microsoft’s broadcast ads with Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates, industry luminary James Governor blogged “Selling big iron the David Brent way,” and Comedy Central selected it as a finalist in its Test Pilot’s contest.

Case study presentation from the BDI Conference:

View all six videos in the Art of the Sale series here.

In Life, There are Two Types of People: Farmers and Ranchers….

Two years after posting the “Art of the Sale” series on YouTube, it continues to receive coverage. ZDNet compared it favorably to Jerry Seinfeld’s Microsoft ads, and New York Times contributor Geoffrey James wrote,

“These six short videos provide as good an education about how B2B sales is actually practiced in real life as you’d get out of a hundred hours of expensive sales training. Just watch them. Trust me.”

The series was selected as Comedy Central’s “Staff Favorite.”  Watch the first three episodes here: