Elementary my dear Watson?  IBM’s PR problem.

So as "they" say, any PR is good PR.  Right?

That's the category of PR in which I'd suggest we place "The Great Watson Experiment" for the folks at IBM.

The Big Bluers obviously sunk a great deal of money into the multi-year quest to create a super computer that could understand the lingo and nuance that only Jeopardy's answers and questions deliver.

2001's HalThe accompanying ad campaign and three-night TV spectacle were only dwarfed in is impressiveness by the performance of Watson, the super computer itself who "man-handled" two of the show's all-time champions including my favorite know-it-all of all time, the consistently smirking Ken Jennings.

And while it succeeded to prove the major point that a machine and kick the you know what out of a pair of humans, it fails on the PR scale for the same reason.

In some ways, getting passed by the machine is that greatest fear of all people.  It is the plot for countless science fiction movies and shows.  The rogue machine references have been flying around social media over the last couple of ranging from Hal of 2001 fame to M-5 who was almost responsible for the demise of the Starship Enterprise.

Star Trek's M5So while it definitely got some attention, the question is will IBM benefit from that attention since it reminded some people of their greatest fears?

Would love to hear your thoughts?

Jon Newman

In 2002 Jon cofounded The Hodges Partnership and has helped to grow it into one of the country’s largest public relations firms (based on O’Dwyer’s annual rankings). Jon has taught communications as an adjunct professor at VCU, speaks regularly at conferences and meetings and blogs and tweets about public relations and marketing issues.

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