IBM Ads Reunite Seven ‘MASH’ Actors

NEW YORK (AP) _ IBM has signed up seven performers from the long-running television series ″M-A-S-H″ for an advertising campaign that introduces its new line of personal computers.

The ensemble approach was designed to draw attention to the new computers, provide versatility for showing what the machines can do and convey the sense that the new models work well together, the company and its admakers said.

Six ex-″M-A-S-H″ actors and actress Loretta Swit are cast in the commercials as co-workers in an office that has just received the new Personal System-2 computer line from International Business Machines Corp.

Harry Morgan, who played Col. Potter in the ″M-A-S-H″ series, is the boss in the new ads, but an IBM spokesman, John Bukovinsky, said the actors are not reprising their ″M-A-S-H″ roles in the commercials.

Four new IBM commercials were shown on network television Thursday night, only hours after the company unveiled its new computer line. The ensemble also appears in newspaper and magazine ads starting Friday.

In addition to Morgan and Ms. Swit, who played ″Hot Lips″ Houlihan in ″M-A-S-H,″ those in the IBM ads include Gary Burghoff, who played Radar; Larry Linville, who was Frank Burns; William Christopher, who was Father Mulcahy; Wayne Rogers, who was Trapper John; and Jamie Farr, who was Klinger.

Alan Alda, who starred in ″M-A-S-H″ as Hawkeye, is not among the players. Bukovinsky said IBM has ″talked with him but he is not under contract with us.″

Alda did commercials for Atari computers several years ago.

The latest IBM campaign was created by the advertising agency Lord, Geller, Federico, Einstein, which has worked for IBM since 1979 and was responsible for the campaign that debuted in 1981 featuring a Charlie Chaplin-like ″Little Tramp″ character for the original IBM personal computer.

Richard Lord, chairman of the ad agency, said the company and the agency were uncertain whether the Chaplin character ″could carry all the products″ being introduced in the new line of computers. He said the idea of computer ″connectivity,″ or the ability of computers to work together, had also become a more important consideration than it had been six years ago.

Using a group of actors in the ads, Lord said, would give the admakers the opportunity to show computers being used in a variety of situations.

In one of the first commercials, Burghoff answers three telephones as he heads out the door and is able to handle each inquiry with a few taps on the computer keyboard. In another spot, Swit shows Rogers how to get an answer by computer without having to make an expensive trip to Hawaii.

Lord said it was useful to have an ensemble of actors who viewers remembered as having worked well together in the past.

″They are perceived as having worked well together, just as the machines work well together,″ he said.

Lord said the actors had each been signed to multi-year contracts. IBM refused to say how much the actors were paid or how much it planned to spend on the advertising.

Lord said the campaign is being aimed at a broad audience. He said the number of people who can influence a decision on which computer system a business buys is large and growing.

In addition, he said, ″Who is to say that someone who sees our commercial and is not in the market today may be there tomorrow.″