What is Bagotronics?

October 29, 2002 8:06 AM

What is Bagotronics? "At Bagotronics we are IN business FOR business. Our scientists, engineers and designers work to develop the innovations that fuel the e-business engine that drives America's economy."

Entertained by an (unfortunately not reproduced on the website) full page ad in the SJ Mercury News, promising a time machine and including an apology to old H.G., I wondered what was up. The ads, the website, all say to stay tuned until Thursday for details, but I'm not really that patient. But quick searches of MeFi, /., and Google turned up nothing, so I swerved over to my favorite lookup service and found that this is simply an advertising comeon, with the site owned by humongous advertising agency Ogilvy & Mathers.
posted by billsaysthis (9 comments total)

Of course, it had to be something like that because who else could afford the full page ads in the Merc, the NY Times, and the WSJ? Silly me.
posted by billsaysthis at 8:07 AM on October 29, 2002

Pretty entertaining ad. Sadly, when I clicked on the link to find out more about the magic business beans, it just opened to a pop-up ad saying watch this space.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 8:19 AM on October 29, 2002

Before you start advertising for free, or doing what the advertising agency gets paid to make you do, try this.
posted by four panels at 8:29 AM on October 29, 2002

fp, adbusters has nothing on this, so why the reference? Even if it is just advertising fluff, at least there is some entertainment value. And you're gonna see ads anyway, so how about a smile with that.
posted by billsaysthis at 8:42 AM on October 29, 2002

I think I can wait until Thursday morning. Looks like OM has a better handle on teaser campaigns than this guy.
posted by xiffix at 11:55 AM on October 29, 2002

I know there will be those of you who will judge this to be some sort of fantastic publicity stunt.[xiffix's link]

As opposed to the rest of us who judge it to be some sort of lame-ass publicity stunt.
posted by originalname37 at 12:29 PM on October 29, 2002

Some sort of incredibly lame-ass publicity stunt previously derided here.
posted by xiffix at 12:54 PM on October 29, 2002

The infomercial linked on the website was actually pretty funny I thought. Product will be silly, useless crap though.

Unless it's really a business time machine... But, I'm thinking probably not. I figure I'm the kinda guy who would buy something like that when it were to become available... and sure enough, on very careful checking, I'm not a super powerful executive of my very own multinational conglomerate at the moment.

I have no idea where the "I *heart* the WTO" plush doll sitting on top of my monitor just came from, but that's probably coincidence.

I figure it's gonna be a Transmeta PDA glued to a Segway painted to look like a big, mobile Vanilla Coke.
posted by Swifty at 9:01 PM on October 29, 2002

Article in today's NYT posits that this is an elaborate lead-in to a promo for IBM. And indeed, IBM's website today unveils something called e-business on demand (you won't need a business time machine). Ho hum.
posted by xiffix at 10:26 AM on October 30, 2002