Ad of the Day: Dell

Dell can help kids fly. So says "Meet Annie," a new commercial about a fifth grader who uses her laptop, a handheld camera and a homemade green screen to create a video of herself going airborne over her elementary school playground.

It's the first TV work from the brand's new agency, Y&R, New York, and it's good: fun, relaxed and an engaging credible story about how a creative kid can use the brand's technology to realize—or, at least, simulate the realization of—a timeless childhood dream.

Sure, it doesn’t do much to specifically differentiate Dell’s products from the competition’s wares (it could just as easily be selling HP). But that interchangeability is, to some degree, symptomatic of a category defined by Apple’s longtime marketing dominance. Dell is one of the other guys. And the yarn Dell is spinning about its brand might help it break out, as Apple stumbles: The new work is a lot more compelling and accessible—not to mention a lot less obnoxious—than Apple’s widely panned new advertising, which oddly alludes back to the Mac vs. PC fight that Mac won years ago.

The Dell ad makes its technology feel human, which pretty much every technology company is trying to do now. It’s well casted, beautifully shot and expertly cut. The copy is perfect for the character; even bits like “the no-way-you-can-do-it-ers”—stupid neologisms being a problem for advertising, writ large—and “brilliant ingenuity”—pretentiousness also being pandemic to commercials—actually fit the voice of an imaginative, precocious 11-year-old.

Of course, if she really wanted to stand out, she would have developed a startup and received millions in VC financing. Maybe in the next episode.