Meet Russell Brand’s “robot butler.” That’s what the comedian, actor, singer — and now pitchman for HP tablets — calls his TouchPad gadget in this new spot from Goodby Silverstein & Partners.
Commercials for competitors’ tablets, like Apple’s iPad and Samsung’s Galaxy, have tended to rely heavily on visuals of the devices in use, and HP doesn’t deviate so far from that here. The brand does try though, with some success, to inject humor into what still looks like a product demo, a not-so-riveting genre now that footage of tablets’ more generic functions (e.g. touch screens) has lost its novelty. And while the spot seems to frame the TouchPad’s universal search feature — which rapidly displays returns from the device, web, and applications — as what sets it apart, that point doesn’t cut through all that clearly.
Brand, meanwhile, offers up some mildly amusing moments, playing both the diva and the “digital manservant.” He also, apparently, has some sort of weird superhuman x-ray vision, demonstrating a unique ability to see through the back of the device well enough to navigate the front, without looking at it. Then there's the ostrich: it's goofy, but what the heck is one is doing in his glitzy apartment. Was it an impulse buy? A leftover party prank? A wayward squatter? And how, exactly, does Brand expect his inanimate tech toy to give the bird the boot?
Ultimately, a string of promos that feature Brand riffing on the TouchPad’s features is more entertaining than the TV commercial. But even those prompted some backlash from the tech world, suggesting that HP should focus more on making a better device, and less on hiring celebrity salesmen.
