Welcome to Now
Last summer Dell Technologies launched a new campaign called "Welcome to Now" in partnership with WPP creative agency VML.
The campaign opened with two case stories about how Dell Technologies is assisting citizen scientists to measure the impact global warming and smart retailers to provide low-friction customer experiences.
Stories like these are helping move the Dell brand to a new place, one that reflects who they are now. One that does not involve cost-cutting, or battling with Lenovo, Asus, Acer to make low-margin PC's.
The "now" Dell is Dell Technologies, a parent company with two business units (1) Dell Client Solutions, which produces desktop PCs, notebooks, tablets and (2) Dell EMC Infrastructure Solutions, which makes servers, storage and networking gear.
Where am I going with this?
I'm trying to put some context around the next stories in the "Welcome To Now" campaign.
Recently Dell Technologies released two more, one called "+ recipes" about generative AI and the other called "+ students" about next-gen classroom technology.
When I saw "+ recipes" from the treadmill at Equinox it resonated with me. Even with the sound off.
In this nostalgic spot, a father damages a critical part of a handwritten recipe (written in kanji characters) from his mother (shown in an old photo, wearing a purple kimono). Then his daughter uses handwriting/character recognition running on Dell hardware to restore the missing characters for the ingredients. This results in deliciousness and remembrance.
The qualities resonating in the spot are humanizing and contemporary. For example, the transmission of culture through three generations of a family (grandmother in traditional dress, father as home-maker/care-taker, a granddaughter using generative AI software). This relates the adoption of new ways of doing things, but doesn’t feel forced or fake.
And it feels like the right strategy for Dell Technologies. Telling stories about innovation, through a human lens, and investing responsibly in the brand so they can move forward in a new and different light.
