Jim Parsons of 'Big Bang Theory' fame shills for Intel
Playing himself, not Sheldon Cooper, Parsons marvels at Intel's technological marvels. It is said to be his first ad as a celebrity endorser.
There comes a time, when you've made your fortune on TV, that you need to make a little more money with an ad.
And so it is that Jim Parsons, Sheldon Cooper of "Big Bang Theory," has given in to pleas to endorse a product. His choice is Intel.
It's been a difficult time for Intel of late, with his chairman Andy Bryant saying only yesterday that it's redoubling its efforts to become a bigger part of the mobile world.
What better way to give a sense that things are moving forward technologically than to hire one of the world's biggest scientific brains? One of the biggest scientific brains on TV, that is.
Parsons plays himself, though it's not hard to perceive the same core of intelligent nerdiness within him as there is within Cooper.
The first ad sees him wandering in to Intel's secret lab. It doesn't say much about Intel's security that Parsons is able to witness secrets long before a guard tosses him out with merely an insistence that he doesn't tell.
A second shows him claiming that a member of an airline's cabin crew is using Intel's new RealSense gesture technology. (She isn't.)
RealSense, Intel hopes, will be demanded by customers in the same way as, once upon a time, Intel Inside was such a reassurance.
AdAge reports that there will be five ads in all and a plethora a social media activity designed to create excitement behind a brand that has slipped a little.
Certainly, Parsons' vast popularity will help. However, while these ads seem nice enough, capturing attention and changing hearts and souls is a little more taxing than it was when Intel seemed to be inside everything good.