If you think the Magic Box campaign was awful, you should have seen instructions for using its
designs and language. These ads were current when I was doing the IBM magazine and I had to
work the term "magic box" into articles. (E.g., "Only a magic box could deliver
so much power
through so many different user interfaces!") Leading various article reviewers
to ask me some very pointed questions about my judgment or sobriety.
The David and Phil duet sang:
> "How quickly they forget" department...those ads are orders of magnitude
> better than the "Magic Box" series, or the Lotus "Superhuman Software"
> series! (But of coure you're fundamentally right, they're obnoxious...)
Not so much obnoxious as just *dumb*.
All three campaigns share the characteristic of being insulting by their
sheer dumbness. Do the people at Ogilvy and Mather really think we're
that dumb? Or do the people at IBM responsible for giving the go-ahead
think we're that dumb? Last time I checked, most of us in IT-land had at
least a few brain cells left.
