As it often does, Sunday night’s Grammys brought us both pain and joy. For joy, we got the snubbing of Justin Bieber in favor of Esperanza Spalding. For pain, HP was kind enough to step in with a new commercial for its forthcoming webOS products.
Let us pause to give HP credit for its sense of drama. If an ad is to horrify listeners with its soundtrack, what better place to fail than on the most important musical event of the year?
HP’s offense was to take the classic, generation-defining Lou Reed song, Walk on the Wild Side, and turn it into a vacuous ode to Tweeting, friending, texting and pretty much every expected thing we already do on our current devices of choice.
To think that the Grammys audience will love you simply because you’ve bought the rights to a famous track makes as much sense as believing a Texas audience will love you because you write a headline that starts with, “Howdy, y’all.” This is an attempted “easy win” that doesn’t come close to winning.
And by the way, Lou Reed — you’re not off the hook for this either.
Once the song was purchased and the original raw lyrics replaced by an exercise in copywriting, all they needed was a singer to bring it to life. Someone failed to realize that even a good vocalist becomes a joke when you force him to desecrate a musical legend.
But rejoice, HP fans. Creative judgment aside, HP’s products themselves actually appear to have some potential. Mute the sound and the future becomes much brighter.
In fact, by muting you will also spare yourself the pseudo-trendy “Everybody on” theme line, as well as the alternate reality that is celebrated in the commercial’s concluding thought: For more businesses and more people, only HP is leading the way.
Oh, that’s right. The HP Touchpad that won’t be out for another six months is leading the way, even though a nameless other tablet virtually invented the category over a year ago. Gotcha.
HP didn’t exactly end up with a spot that scores high marks for music. But it performs surprisingly well in the category of musical comedy.
Tags: hp lou reed, hp touchpad, ipad, ken segall, touchpad lou reed
