Steven the kid who convinces people to buy Dell

[Undertoad]

I am facinated by the current Dell campaign and its "corporate" spokesperson Steven.

At first, Steven just had to convince one person - Mrs. Lindsey - to buy a Dell for her kid William. As soon as I saw that ad, I knew it would work. It's just one of those things. Quirky, a little weird, a little irritating, but it communicated its pitch perfectly. Get the price point (under $1000) out front - remind people that their kids need computers in the fall - subtlely hint that superstores are crappy places to buy systems - have the parents believe that the "cool" kids, cooler than your kid, are all into Dells.

The cool kids aren't all into Dells. William won't be happy with the system his mom got. The video card won't be good for his games, the onboard sound will be ugly, the monitor will be el-cheapo and he probably won't be able to upgrade any parts easily next year when all his friends have killer boxes.

And the "more tech support awards over the past five years" ? Most of those awards are 3-5 years old.

But never mind, now we have Steven hawking (Stephen Hawking?) in an Xmas hat or looking for change in an old couch, and the magic is gone. It's like Steven NEEDS Wiliam and Mrs. Lindsey to work his magic. Actually, it's more like they realized the original ads worked, and tried to duplicate the quirkyness by just bringing back the quirkiest player.

The original ad, I predicted, would single-handedly rescue the depressed tech industry, doubling Intel's stock price, etc. Dell's stock has gone from 17 up to 27 since the ad started, Intel's from 20 to 33. Of course there's got to be much more than a dumb ad to cause that. And Gateway, the traditional low-price PC maker, had its stock jump from 5 to 10 during the same time frame.

Never mind. I still enjoy Steven, just not as much as before. He's tricky. A little dishonest, a little too calculating. Come to think of it, he had to trick William into wanting a Dell before Mrs. Lindsey, and I'm not sure why he did that. But he's like... maybe the guy who made milk come out of my nose when we sat together at lunch in 10th grade, who maybe went into house painting for a profession because he was too quirky to work anywhere else.