IBM'S `E-BUSINESS' FOLK TOUT COMPUTER SERVICES: EMPLOYEES IN $75 MIL PUSH AREN'T THE CLASSIC SHADE OF BLUE.

Advertising Age, February, 1999 by Johnson, Bradley

IBM Corp., the world's biggest computer marketer, also wants to be known as the biggest computer services company. And it will spend $75 million this year to make the case.

IBM Global Services today launches a U.S. campaign to explain a complex business through simple ads focusing on people. Campaigns starring employees are hardly a new idea in corporate advertising, but IBM refreshes the concept with its ``e-business people,'' real IBMers who, well, don't look like old Big Blue.

One of the new regime: Nick Simicich, an offbeat looking sort with a big beard, Indiana Jones hat and job title of ``ethical hacker.'' He makes clients' computers hacker-proof.

These are not the ``white guys with buzz cuts'' who sold and serviced mainframes 20 years...

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