Super Bowl Retro Week: EDS- Herding Cats

Cutter's Note: Since her first ad review was so good, I decided to have Mini-Blonde (Now knowns as Mandy the Mini-Blonde) come back and join in the amazing fun that is Super Bowl Retro Week!

Today, I will be looking at a commercial that first aired during the 2000 Super Bowl: 

As an owner of two kittens and someone who does business with the federal government, I can relate to both the literal and figurative messages of this commercial. 

                                                                   My Pretty Kitties

Lint rollers! Yarn! Kitty scratches! Sneezes! Trouble wrangling things together! I understand all of those things. But what I don’t understand is what EDS actually does.

Nowadays, I can use my Droid to look up the company without leaving the couch.  In 2000, I would have had to walk over to my desktop, wait for dial up, and then hope I remembered the company name or the AOL keyword because I’m sure EDS wouldn’t come up in the Yahoo search results for “cat herders.”  Then again, maybe it did.

Maybe that’s why we Google things now?  

I have a problem with a business-to-business company advertising on the Super Bowl. The competition for attention during the Super Bowl is so fierce that it’s unlikely that you’ll really resonate with your target audience. 

What if the few people who figuratively needed their e-business cats herded were distracted by their kids playing Pokemon? Or rejoicing over AOL’s acquisition of Time Warner by popping opening a can of Surge? Or trying to figure out how to respond to their friend’s poorly delivered “I see dead people” joke?

Then all you’re left with is a bunch of football lovers and their friends who remember that "cute cat commercial," but not your company.  

                                                            Surge: Gone but not forgotten

I work for a professional services firm, so I understand how hard it is to explain in layman’s terms what your company does. So bravo to EDS for a valiant (and really cute) try.

However, the explanation of EDS in this commercial is so vague, I could use the same commercial for my firm, and I’m not sure if they even provide the same services as my firm (I looked it up. They do not).   

                                                                           

Despite their flagrant misuse of ad dollars, EDS actually survived the dot-com bubble burst and went on to be acquired by Hewlett-Packard. I’m sure many people were laid off, and the person who decided to buy space for this commercial during the Super Bowl was probably among them.

But this commercial is really, really cute. If cat herder was a real job, I would be the first in line when an opening became available.

I wonder where they are herding the cats to? My guesses:

• To the Netherlands to serve as mice deterrents for the world’s largest piece of cheese.
• To serve as the front lines to successfully thwart the Great Dog Invasion of 2000.
• To a magical place called Cat Mountain where cats always stay kitten-sized and they love to cuddle.

It was most likely none of those things because the last two don’t exist and the first would be really unsanitary. But maybe, just maybe, with EDS’s ability to bring together information, ideas, and technology, we could make Cat Mountain happen.