Cool Gear? Cool Kids? Moby? It's HP, Yo!
When you watch The Real World on MTV, don't you often wish the episodes were only five minutes long, focused mainly on computerized digital art, and full of awesome Hewlett-Packard products? No? That's cause you're out of touch with the youth of today. Luckily MTV and Hewlett-Packard are in touch with what's hip, and are bringing this fantasy "Real World Of Kids Looking At Computer Screens" to life! Could this be the best digital art-focused corporate co-branded semi-reality advertainment vehicle ever? YES, if Moby has anything to say about it! The totally tubular new series is called Engine Room, and is thoughtfully sponsored by HP itself. It follows in the footsteps of classic HP-sponsored MTV branded entertainment video series like Meet or Delete and Dorm Storm. Remember those? Yea! HP is seriously spending "tens of millions of dollars" on this show. Try to ignore this focus-grouped lineup!:
The teams of contestants are divided by the regions they come from: Asia-Pacific, Europe, Latin America and North America. They are visited during the competition by guests like the musician Moby; Kevin Smith, the movie director; and the British pop band the Ting Tings. The digital creations of the teams were judged by a diverse panel that included musicians, filmmakers, museum curators, a physicist, a tattoo artist, critics and Pete Connolly, an art director from Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, the Hewlett-Packard creative agency.
Ha, a tattoo artist and a physicist? What will they think of next? I guess this is why my new main man David Roman, the slammin VP of worldwide marketing communications at HP's personal systems group, told the Times, "We don't want it to be advertising; we want it to be real." Mind. Blown. The youth is your homeboy, HP. [NYT]