Jay-Z plays chess.

So this HP campaign came out in July. What can I say - I'm not Chopper 9 News, aiiight?

HP worked with Motion Theory director Matthew Cullen and Goodby Silverstein + Partners (the agency driving the excellent state of their designs and ads) on 5 spots featuring personally guided tours of celebrities' hard drives, illustrated simply with their hands, voice, and some cg.

I am including the following spot, featuring Pharrell, because it he is the only celebrity gangsta enough to allude, albeit delicately, to having porno in his 'personal' computer world. Unlike soooome people, not to name names (Survivor creator Mark Burnett, who, judging by his beady eyes, is so obviously is into pornography, but instead fesses only to ebay auctions, bad billboard designs and show ideas).



In the MTV world, he's known as Pharrell Williams. On the Pong message boards? Only as huge_joystick.

The other celebrities are:

• Jay-Z, CEO of hip hop - who wins a chess game and shows some Gehry.


• Shaun White, master of snowboards, gold medals, gravity - who has the funniest video of the series. He likes myspace, 'tons of crazy photos', and video game cheat codes. Awesome!


• Mark Cuban, technology maverick - who owns the Dallas Mavericks, and answers 1,000 emails a day.

The visual environment of this campaign - the ads, website, etc. - have a quite different feel, with illustrations that are really Saul Bass in style. They look cool on their own, but I think they seem weird and retro in a campaign with such modern and tech-looking ad spots.



See all the ads, the new 'making of' video, and more media of varying degrees of awesome, on the hp personal again microsite.