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From: taylor@hplabsc.UUCP (Dave Taylor)
Newsgroups: mod.comp-soc
Subject: Re: High-Tech advertising
Message-ID: <974@hplabsc.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 11-Jan-87 21:27:31 EST
Article-I.D.: hplabsc.974
Posted: Sun Jan 11 21:27:31 1987
Date-Received: Mon, 12-Jan-87 02:14:53 EST
Reply-To: aburt@isis.UUCP (Andrew Burt)
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Laboratories
Lines: 28
Approved: taylor@hplabs
Reference: <969@hplabsc.UUCP>


This article is from aburt@isis.UUCP (Andrew Burt)
 and was received on  Sun Jan 11 14:01:32 1987
 
> [what Buick] plans to do is mail 20,000 floppy disks to users of Apple 
> personal computers.

GM already did this with Chevy.  The prices were out of date, not all options
were listed, it was sloooooow (in basic), the graphics were really pathetic.
It had a stupid game (try to maneuver your car to the dealer-ship by bouncing
it off obstacles dropped in your path; using essentially text graphics only).
As I recall it didn't have any specs at all.  It also ran on IBM PCs in
addition to Apples (though it didn't run well on a near PC clone).  I
managed to get it to bomb somehow too.

I thought the idea was novel, and worth doing, yet it was done so poorly
it was almost negative advertising in my eyes.  It had the looks of having
been done by a stereotypical teeny-bobber hacker.

Ford did a similar thing, but it was only a hype-floppy for its Merkur car.
It had comparisons with other cars, but of course carefully omitted any
ratings in which it didn't fare well.  Yet it was only for one car, hence
it wasn't very useful overall.  Just a computerized sales brochure.  I
really doubt it caused anyone to buy this car.

If computers are to be well accepted in society they need to be presented
as well-conceived and executed tools, not juvenile and error prone jokes.

Andrew Burt 			        isis!aburt / aburt@isis.cs.du.edu