> > I agree, I've seen it. This ad is the BESTEST! My favorite part is how the speaker stands there with a total shocked look on his face. You hear his voice echoing "Mow the lawn--mow the lawn--" in his head. Then next scene, the engineers dump out the box of spare parts on the table and dig through it. you hear someone asking far in the background "Does it have to print while mowing?" (I always cracked up on that line). It finally cuts back to the speaker who is still looking at the TV audience with a totally shocked look, only now the HP printer is going back and forth behind him, mowing the lawn and spitting out grass from the paper tray!
> >
> > HP gets my vote for best commercial ever. Maybe adcritic has it.
>
> You just reminded me of some scenes I had forgotten-- THANK YOU! Now my memory of that ad makes it seem so much better! I had thought that the ad was too old to still be on AdCritic, and I just looked, and it seems that I am right. :-( Does anyone know of any other way to get ahold of OLD ads like this one? I would give my right arm to see that ad again...
>
> Don "Wouldn't actually give his right arm" Monkey

My local newspaper this past weekend had someone asking about finding old TV ad campaigns on the web. One archive suggested was The Commercial Archive (http://www.commercial-archive.com). There is also the archive at AdAge.com. I am not really sure what terms should be used on the search engines on either site.

I did find information from the Clio Awards regarding the following HP ad compaign:

Year: 1997
Award: Bronze
Entry Type: Television/Cinema
Category: National Campaign
Advertiser/Product/Service: Hewlett Packard
Title: "Mower :30 Babysitter :30 Room :30"
Advertising Agency: Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco
Agency Producer: Cindy Fluitt
Art Director(s): Tom Routson, Amy Nicholson
Cinematographer: Mike Trim
Copywriter(s): Albert Kelly, Blake Daley
Creative Director(s): Jeffrey Goodby, Rich Silverstein
Director: Jeffrey Goodby
Editing Company: Phoenix Editorial, San Francisco
Editor: Bob Frisk
Arranger/Composer: Don Piestrup
Music Company: Piece of Cake, Los Angeles
Producer: Karen Rohrbacher
Production Company: Propaganda Films, Los Angeles


I'm thinking that this may not be the correct Hewlett-Packard ad which Monkeyman is describing... but at least the timeframe seems about right.


Wolf "does anyone taking Communications desire to write to HP, and tell them you want it for a marketing course?" spirit

And perhaps some other of our noble Rinky-dinks may yet locate a link to this particular commercial ;)