The bigger they come, the harder they fall.
Grand old IBM, the Hercules of information technology, is apparently so ensnarled by its own committees that it can lend powerful information-technology help to billion-dollar companies but can’t put forth a decent full-page ad to tell the world about it.
What does the reader see here?
Most of the page is taken up with a bleed photograph of the lonely Arctic tundra. And moping around there, out of focus, are a herd of bored-looking and boring caribou.
But if we look closely, there is a small in-focus rectangle in the upper right corner containing an airliner, presumably a Finnair plane.
I’m a great believer in the visual of an ad expressing or reinforcing the message presented by the words.
So what is this picture suggesting to us? Finland is an empty, depressing country? And they have planes to fly you over it and get you the hell out of there?
But wait. It’s not fair to consider the illustration without also considering its marriage to the headline.
Network
