IBM's "Help Desk" has a slew of advertisements that appear on my TV. These commercials cover a wide variety of technologies like RFID, virtual classrooms, webportals presented in a tacky manner as if IBM invented these things, or is the pioneer in these technologies. Almost all the ads are so artificial that anyone who has even the basic understanding of these technologies is left with a feeling of distaste about IBM.

Though I've nothing against IBM in general, I do think that the executive who's responsible with the "Help Desk" campaign has failed to realize that this TV campaign has a fundamental problem in informing its target audience the kind of service they should be expecting from IBM.

Take this ad as an example which I call "The Shepherd". The ad starts with a about half a dozen people arriving at the "Help Desk" in the middle of what appears to be a farm or a sheep ranch surrounding a female "Help Desk" executive who asks them to describe their problem, and everyone starts blabbering all at once. You cannot make out what they're saying. The "Desk Woman", just by looking at them identifies all of them but 1, including a buyer, a shipper, a supplier, and a farmer there could be 1 or 2 more. But I can't recall that right now. Anyways she proposes that what they need is a (now stop laughing will ya?) "Customized Integrated Real Time Web Portal", to keep track of each other. Now she turns to; and asks the one person she couldn't identify who he is. This guy has been holding a shepherd's crook the whole time, so no points to you for guessing who he is! Ironical? I don't think so. Doesn't it make you wonder who's the shepherd of IBM's "Help Desk" TV campaign?