Electronics 1996
IBM
If my six-year-old can make friends on the Internet from here to Timbuktu
FROM THE PRINTED PAGEOriginal ad copy
OCR transcription from the archived page. Scanning and reading-order errors may remain.
“If my six-year-old can make friends on the Internet from here to Timbuktu, surely someone can get the folks in my regional offices to work as a team.” MERGE Today we do business from the farthest reaches of the planet, from cars, airports and occasionally from the office. Yet keeping in touch seems far from child's play. How do we cross these barriers of time and space? Lotus Notes—the new way of working together in this networked world. Your team has just finished a report to be presented in four regions of the world. You all get on different planes. At 30,000 feet, you have a change of heart. You rewrite. By the time you land, it's brilliant. But three of your managers are about to present the wrong report. Fear not. Notes can share your new report with everyone the moment you land. And Notes does the same with inventories, customer files, sales information, presentations, call reports, you name it. It's constantly updating information and then sharing it among your people, customers and suppliers. No matter what platform they use: Windows, UNIX, Mac or OS/2. Notes also has a Web browser and search engine that lets you find only the information that's valuable to you. And it lets you publish information on the Web and even send e-mail—all from the Notes environment. Begin working in a world where you never hear “I didn't know that,” “No one told me,” or “I haven't received that memo yet.” You'll make more than just friends. In more places than just Timbuktu. Visit www.lotus.com to see how. Notes is already helping successful companies compete. Or call 1-800-IBM-7080, ext. G205, and we'll send you a free Lotus Notes “Get the Facts” brochure, as well as our free 16-page booklet highlighting how IBM can help your business thrive in a networked world. Solutions for a small planet. IBM.
Commentary
I begin with the child, because the ad does. A six-year-old’s new friend lives “from here to Timbuktu,” an old shorthand for elsewhere turned into a screen-sized distance. Then the oversized blue place name gives way to a more ordinary corporate geography: regional offices, airports, four presentations, four planes. The joke is that a child can cross the world socially while the grown-ups cannot keep one report current.
The copy makes that contradiction operational. A manager rewrites a report at 30,000 feet; colleagues are about to present the old version. Lotus Notes promises to share the revision on landing, then broadens the claim to inventories, customer files, presentations and call reports. The ad is selling a common, changing record across Windows, UNIX, Mac and OS/2, not just a faster memo. Its idea of “teamwork” is largely a problem of version control, with a punch line attached.
The scan also catches an early networked office at a particular threshold. It offers a Web browser, search, publishing and e-mail inside Notes, yet the call to action is still a toll-free number for brochures alongside lotus.com. Today, a shared document can travel with a team continuously; here, the crucial moment is the executive landing after a flight. That contrast is visible in the scenario, while the difference in everyday expectations is my inference from it.
For a new copywriter, notice how the headline borrows a child’s voice to make an enterprise problem feel embarrassingly simple. “Timbuktu” is enormous in blue type, while the qualification about regional offices is set in a small, narrow column. The visual scale performs the joke before the reader reaches Notes. The practical lesson: find a human comparison that makes the buyer’s friction obvious, then show the product solving a recognizable work scene.
Lotus Development created Notes, and IBM acquired Lotus in 1995; IBM later divested Notes and Domino to HCL in 2019. IBM today describes its work around software, infrastructure, consulting, hybrid cloud and AI. IBM’s account of the Lotus acquisition, divestiture announcement and current company overview document that change.
The need the ad names—people working from different places with current information—still makes sense. Its particular promise of landing, reconnecting, and catching up belongs to a time when connectivity felt like a trip between islands; the underlying wish to keep everyone on the same version has not gone away.