IBM aired an iSeries ad during the Pittsburgh Steelers/Denver Broncos game this past weekend, which is good news for a platform that can use all the exposure it can get. But the previous weekend during the Indianapolis Colts/Steelers game, IBM aired advertisements for the xSeries that looked strikingly familiar to the iSeries ads and had the legion of iSeries faithful clucking their disappointment.

The Colts/Steelers NFL Playoff game featured several IBM advertisements running during the commercial breaks. Much to the surprise of this iSeries reporter, at least, the ads were hauntingly familiar. It was enough to make me stop, shudder, and ask, "What the heck?"

For the "Take Back Control" message at the center of the new iSeries ads had been commandeered by the xSeries and BladeCenter servers. It seemed that the iSeries' uniqueness had suddenly been pulled out from underneath it. How can someone "Take Back Control" with a Wintel-based server, I wondered, when the iSeries ads' portrayal of the message was the elimination of a proliferating, Wintel-based server farm?

Analysts have said that the iSeries is a unique machine with unique qualities, and it's those qualities that must be marketed in order for the box to be successful. When a "lesser" machine in the same IBM family co-opts the iSeries message, it's bound to have the iSeries-illiterate masses wondering why they should bother with an oddball machine like the iSeries when it's apparent — from IBM's confusing ad campaign, anyway — that there's little difference between it and other IBM systems.

The iSeries community seemed to take exception to the fact that the iSeries' unique marketing message had been appropriated by the BladeCenter, and a steady stream of discussion followed the Colts/Steelers game on Midrange-L.

"IBM seems to advertise everything but iSeries," says iSeries fan Gerald Kern, MIS project leader for The Toledo Clinic. "Granted, they did run maybe a dozen iSeries TV ads in 2005. But compare that to the thousands of other IBM ads that were televised in 2005, and I'd say it's safe to say no one outside of an iSeries user noticed." Kern theorizes that because IBM is a services business, Big Blue is going to put its advertising power behind the products that generate services, including AIX/Unix environments and Wintel servers.

IBM didn't have anyone available to comment on the xSeries commercials. However, last week after the announcement of disappointing fourth-quarter iSeries revenue, Rochester issued a statement promising to intensify marketing efforts for the platform.