Remembering and Forgetting Chiefly, we wanted something that people would remember. Using the Chaplin character was one way to create ads with stopping power. The firm has always been seen as efficient and reliable, but it has also been regarded as somewhat cold and aloof. The Tramp, with his ever present red rose, has given IBM a human face.
Literal absurdity is by no means a disqualifier for such metaphors.
Such ads use nature the way the military uses camouflage. The absurdity of the smoking ads, however, is more than matched by the contradictions inherent in the IBM campaign. His very image came to immediately signify humanity, survival, innocence, the beauty of the commonplace, and, above all, the soul or spirit. Thus does IBM acquire a human face and graft a soul onto its new machine. The method is virtually indistinguishable from the way that Salem bonds itself to Springtime or Marlboro to the western landscape.