“The real inventors are not in the ads; they are played by actors. Mr. Bell said he wanted to ensure the commercials were humorous, and avoid arguments with Intel employees over which should be featured.” NY Times, May 6, 2009, on Intel’s newest ad campaign.
It tells you a lot about Intel that when they decided to run a bunch of ads that supposedly showcase how their own engineers and technicians are on par with rock stars and artisans, it couldn’t stand to show real employees. So they hired actors to play Intel’s real employees.
This is about as cynical as you can get. The whole point of the ad should be that the people in it are authentic. They are counting on audiences to be stupid. They are probably not wrong.
One of them is tagged as co-inventor of USB. It tells you a lot about consumer ignorance that most people will regard that as a heroic achievement. USB is a cooperative venture between Microsoft and Intel intended to dodge the cost of adding a 1392 (“Firewire”) port invented by Apple. Firewire has been around for years and years before USB, and it is still faster and more reliable and doesn’t screw up your computer when you plug in or unplug devices. (I am copying large number of very large files right now to a USB device and, as I watch them slowly crawl across the ports, I crave a Firewire connection instead.)
Why on earth did they not use Intel’s real engineers? Because they have no regard for honesty and authenticity whatsoever. None. Not an ounce of respect for truth or accuracy or integrity. None. None whatsoever. Nil. Zero. They didn’t hesitate: let’s tell people about our company. Let’s lie.
Surely the advertising agency will defend itself by saying that advertisers use models all the time. That’s true– and the public knows that ads that feature unrealistically beautiful people in it posing beside cars or swimming pools drinking beer are using models and actors. But the Intel ads deliberately adopt the style normally used (by Home Hardware, for example) to show real employees in order to intentionally confuse the viewer into thinking these are real Intel employees. They even tag the “actor” with the real name of the engineer without identifying him as an actor.
And I know that nobody else cares. And I know that nobody cares that I care. But this is my web page and I get to say what I like.