IBM’s Making Money Ad: Virtual Worlds Arriving

IBM seems to be poking virtual worlds in the eye with the following commercial:

However, I think the ad is drawing on ads from the old “Wild West of the Web” days, when companies were being told by trendy geeky kids that the Internet was all the rage, but who had no idea how to make money on it. Enter IBM….if you want to tap the potential of this trendy new technology and do more than own a virtual island, you’d better call IBM.

IBM ran a series hmmm, 10 years ago? While the ad might feel like a jab to current trendy, geeky kids (yeah, don’t post saying the average age in SL is 32, I’m just saying kids to make a point), I think it’s actually drawing on historical precedent (either that or their agency doesn’t have a better way of saying what they said during the birth of e-commerce): virtual worlds are new, people are talking about them, people aren’t making money in them (rare exceptions), so if you want to know how to actually USE this stuff to improve/increase business, call Big Blue.