IBM to Promote the iSeries During the NFL Playoffs

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

If you are both an iSeries fan and a football fan, you're going to like this weekend, unless you were rooting for the San Diego Chargers as most of the employees at IT Jungle were last week. This Saturday, the New York Jets, also known as Gang Green, who beat the Chargers for a divisional playoff berth, take on the Pittsburgh Steelers during the NFL playoffs. And during that game, IBM will be spending some greenbacks to promote the iSeries.

While there have been plenty of complaints in recent years that IBM's marketing of the iSeries had atrophied to the point where it was getting gangrenous, Big Blue (not to be confused with the New York Giants football team, of course) has been actively promoting the iSeries in television advertising spots since mid-December 2004 on the ABC network, running in five spots. This week, CBS is getting a little money, and presumably NBC will get its turn at some point.

IBM is running the same iSeries TV ad during the football game that it showed at the Spring COMMON Conference and that it piloted on television in early 2004 in Kansas City and St. Louis. This ad emphasizes the ability of the iSeries to consolidate the workloads of many servers and thereby simplify IT infrastructure. (If you haven't seen this ad, you can view it at the Toronto User's Group site, which has a copy of the ad posted in an .mpg format.

"IBM is committed to alerting the marketplace about the simplicity of the iSeries platform, and its growing portfolio of solutions for small and medium-sized businesses," said Peter Bingaman, vice president of marketing for the iSeries in a statement. "Airing this TV spot during one of the most popular weekends in sports demonstrates IBM's increased commitment to building general awareness of the iSeries servers and their unique benefits. We expect to reach nearly 30 million viewers with this particular placement and look forward to a continued positive response from an extended audience."

The obvious questions now are, if the Jets beat the Steelers, will IBM run more spots in the conference championships?

And when the Jets beat either the New England Patriots or the Indianapolis Colts (which I am told by our resident football experts is unlikely, but so were iSeries TV ads only a few months ago), will IBM promote the iSeries in the show of shows, the Super Bowl?

Our sources at IBM are unaware of Big Blue's future iSeries TV promotional plans, but it probably depends on how well this NFL divisional playoff spot works.

Editor's note to IBM Public Relations: In the press release announcing the NFL playoff advertisements for the iSeries, IBM said that the "iSeries holds the IT industry's largest install base for midrange servers--400,000 servers are currently being used in 100 countries." I'm not disputing the numbers, but rather the English. It is an "installed base," as in a base of machines that is installed, not an "install base," as in a base that is in stall. Or, at least, we hope not! These are the jokes, folks.