Cisco offers “cloud” services, and apparently everybody thought they were the greatest thing since sliced bread, until the recent hacking attacks on (supposedly) well-protected companies like Citicorp, Sony Playstation, the World Bank, etc., took place. Then, all of a sudden, clouds seemed pretty vulnerable. So in response, the Cisco ad team came up with this new ad to trumpet how secure their cloud systems are from hacking/virus/malware attacks.
So, to the commercial: It’s another animated ad from Cisco, which uses graphics and cartoon images to show viruses, malware, etc., trying to attack their cloud, but all bouncing off, unable to penetrate. This is a great and fun idea! The only problem is, all of the stuff attacking and bouncing off of the cloud is this old 8-bit 1980s-video-game-looking stuff, like things out of Space Invaders, Defender, Pac-Man etc. It’s really super-cute-looking, and I love it, but it has a problem, unfortunately.
So what it makes me think is this: Cisco will protect you from all the old, well-known viruses and stuff, but not from the new ones. I know this isn’t what they’re trying to say, and I’ll bet that’s not even close to being true about Cisco, since I think they’re supposed to be about the best there is for this kind of stuff. But nevertheless, this is the impression the ad leaves on me, and it’s not my fault. They could have made it so I never would have thought anything like that; and easily, too.
In order to avoid this problem, all they would have to do is replace a few of the 1980s video game graphics with brand new, state-of-the-art-looking 3-D designs of things. They could have some large screw thingy trying to break into the cloud and breaking its tip off; they could have a photo-realistic Trojan Horse trying to push its way in and being crushed; they could have some fantasy wizard trying to blast his way in with magic and getting it rebounded back onto himself and disappearing; they could have something that looks a little bit like the Anonymous logo (you know, that hacker group with the question mark as a head above a business suit {A great logo, by the way!}) trying to jackhammer their way through the cloud barrier and failing, etc. (<Although I’d be willing to bet that if Anonymous wanted in, nobody could stop them!) Anything that references recent hacking attacks and also looks like it’s brand new state-of-the-art graphics would have worked, but then put them in with some of the old 8-bit-looking stuff, and with some 16-bit-looking stuff too, to indicate that they also protect you from the older viruses, etc. And that way, I think it would have done its job perfectly. (But even so, it’s a beautiful and wonderfully-imaginative spot as it is!)
(I can’t find this ad on YouTube, dammit! I really wanted you to see it so you’d see what I’m talking about, but I guess maybe it’s too new to be up yet. But hopefully, you’ve seen it already on TV.)
BTW: The earlier Cisco “Cloud with Confidence” ad is quite good! No message problem with that one! And here it is so you can see it for yourself:
Also, about this “Cloud with Confidence” commercial, the SimpleRNA blog thinks this ad isn’t doing Cisco any favors, since it doesn’t tell you how Cisco is involved in clouds. I suppose they have a point, but I sort of assumed that you could find out by doing a Google search, or by going to their website to find out more (that’s what they say to do at the end of the ad). But isn’t Cisco a company used mainly by large corporate interests? Cisco always seems to do sort-of nebulous commercials about how they’re “leading the way” or “keeping business connected”, or some such thing, but they’re never very specific about it.* So I thought this was doing the same kind of thing in just a general sense to try to get companies interested in using clouds. So I’d guess the ad is aimed at the CEO or some high-up executive in a big company, so that they’ll go to work after seeing the ad and say to their IT guys: “Hey, when are we going to start using those cloud things? They look good/newfangled to me!”, and then the IT guys would have to figure that stuff out. But perhaps SimpleRNA knows a lot more about that computer stuff than I do, so I defer to them on this point, assuming their point has something to do with arcane tech knowledge, or simple annoyance at these corporate-aimed television commercials (I don’t use a cloud, so I don’t know about them, and I agree about the corporate stuff being annoying and vague sometimes. {Okay, most of the time.}). Here is their post:
* BTW: A lot of ads on TV are for corporate stuff, so they don’t really speak to individuals very well, and they seem pointless, like the ads about the railroads that ship stuff all over the place and have that bracket logo with dots as wheels to look like the outline of a train car.† I don’t have the option to ask for that, or to ever use them for anything by choice, so the ad seems pointless to me. Maybe they’re just trying to get us to say: “Oh, I like those guys!” if we ever see their trains anywhere, or not to get mad if their train hits the car we’re in or something like that. Or perhaps they’ve been picketed by nature-protecting hippies and they’re tired of it, so they hope to send a more environmental message. But who knows? SimpleRNA’s post is terse, but it’s pithy, and he’s (or she’s) got a point! Ads intended for corporations don’t say much to individuals, usually, and as such they can be a very annoying and seemingly pointless intrusion into our lives! (But they’re funding the show we’re watching, so we have no choice in the matter, if we want to see the show.)
† Oh! I just found it! Here is one of those railroad shipping ads I was just talking about (the company is called CSX):
