DailyTech - Unveiling NVIDIA's New (Playboy) Model

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Blog: IT Unveiling NVIDIA's New (Playboy) Model
Sven Olsen (Blog) - November 8, 2006 2:00 PM

8 comment(s) - last by AmbroseAthan.. on Nov 10 at 11:06 AM

Goodbye Dawn, hello Adrianne Curry

Bye Dawn, you won't be missed

Typically we aren't ones to point out blatent marketing compaigns, but here's one we couldn't pass up.

Today at NVIDIA's GeForceLan event, the company announced its GeForce 8800-series GPUs. To demonstrate the GPUs are capable such life-like quality, the company hired a model to officially replace Dawn, the old mascot of GeForce. Adrianne Curry has been featured in Maxim, Playboy and VH1's America's Top Model.

Over the countinuous snicker of hundreds of sex-starved male journalists, NVIDIA's Ujesh Desai attempted to describe how the new shader models in G80 can show us the complex details of Curry's pores.

"I am honored to have been selected as the first celebrity for this project," said Adrianne Curry. "The Digital Adrianne is so realistic, it's really trippy. Lara Croft, eat my shorts!" Incredible.

And yet we wonder why E3 tried to shut down booth babes.

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Love it

By Chillin1248 on 11/9/2006 2:21:49 AM , Rating: 3

Love the article picture, made me smile.

But I do wonder myself why they chose a porn model (unless you count Playboy as "art") to represent the power of their next generation GPU. If anything I would have gone back to the Mad Max type of scenario this time more ambitious and modeled on a real life tough son of a bitch, I think seeing him tear apart a oil rig with steam effect and water dripping accurately (part of the physic shading) would show off even more of their card while retaining a masculine appeal.

And how the hell did the idea get across that the model originaly to be chosen as the lucky motion capture and artist rendering had to be porn, I mean it really does not look good professionally if you ask my opinion.

-------
Chillin

RE: Love it

By Moishe on 11/9/2006 7:43:12 AM , Rating: 2

This is purely about one thing: sex sells.

I personally find it ridiculous. If the only major difference between nvidia and ati is the stiffy you get... the fanboys will buy the stiffy card. That's what nVidia is hoping for and sadly, it might work sometimes.

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RE: Love it

By Trisped on 11/9/2006 1:17:30 PM , Rating: 2

I have a hard time respecting NVIDIA because they use marketing tactics like this. Yes it works, but you are not selling the product. If you have to advertise things like sexy models to get me to buy your product I question the value of your product. It is just that simple.

On the down side I am starting to lose faith in ATI since they were bought out by AMD. Who will I buy from then?

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RE: Love it

By ninjit on 11/9/2006 2:53:54 PM , Rating: 2

quote:
On the down side I am starting to lose faith in ATI since they were bought out by AMD. Who will I buy from then?

You could give me your money, and I won't give you anything in return - especially not a sexy spokes-model - that way you'll have nothing to complain about.
:)

I used to think the same way, but now I don't care:

I figure the people who are smart enough to be concerned more about performance/features/value of a product (such as ourselves) will see past the marketing bull...

And the prepubescent dipshits who like to brag about the size/power of their gaming rigs with almost no clue as to how the components actually work (to compensate for their small weenies), will take one look at Adrianne and decide that nVidia is the next graphics card for them - exactly the kinda people this marketing strategy is targeting.

This whole use of sex appeal to market completely unrelated products used to bother me a lot (cars are another good example), but now I just figure if anyone is too dumb to fall for it, more kudos to the company for getting your money.
Smarter people will tend to look deeper.

...And order in the world is maintained

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RE: Love it

By AmbroseAthan on 11/10/2006 11:06:02 AM , Rating: 3

Since when has Adrienne Curry been a porn model? Its not like she was caught in a XXX movie of some sort. If you asked someone who she is, they are going to say "she's a model" or "she was that girl on Surreal Life."

She is a well known fashion model and television star, who also happens to have appeared in Playboy, like a gazillion other people, and showed the same you can see in any movie where a woman takes her top off (the list is long and distinguished on that one, including most of Hollywood's elite).

They looked for a hot model (fashion) who knew a bit about games, and found she was a good start for their virtual celebrity program. I don't see how this leads to NVidia being cast as the people who looked for a porn model.

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You're Right

By Topweasel on 11/9/2006 4:18:04 PM , Rating: 2

You're absolutely right, I never thought of it. They should use someone other then a model to be model for an advertising campaign. I am glad to see that people have enough self-respect to understand that posing nude for a magazine, that a large portion of the market that Nvidia is using her for advertising for reads, is completely unacceptable. Its also nice to see that people are willing to hold a person responsible for their past actions no matter what reason they had for doing so.

Nvidia should learn from this in the future, that hiring a model beautiful to appear in playboy to advertise to men obsessed with gaming is unacceptable and that no self respecting male is willing to look at her now that she has done the despicable act of appearing in an adult magazine. Hopefully they will also avoid actresses who have ever appeared topless movies (or also in magainzes) (including Maggie Gyllanhall (bad spelling) Jodie Foster, Jessica Biel, Jamie Lee Curtis, Brittany Daniel.

RE: You're Right

By Topweasel on 11/10/2006 8:56:56 AM , Rating: 2

To re-iterate some of the Sarcasm in my last post people should really click on the link that send you to the presser (the one thats her name). It goes over several other reasons why she was picked and while even the presser refers to playboy (which proves they were not worried about but infact they considered it a plus) there where so many other reasons, including the fact that she runs a popular blog and she even knows who Luara Croft is.

I wish we could could get past the Prudish inbred hatred of nudity and sex in the country and deal with things that actually matter like violence. My I like my violence bloody and gory but I would rather have my children see nudity then some of the things on broadcast tv.

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Dawn!

By Tilmitt on 11/9/2006 4:26:38 PM , Rating: 2

Dawn is prettier! NV30 rocks!

Also I think sex appeal is brilliant...i'd much rather have a beautiful cg girl on the box of my card than some ugly monster. To live in a world with such beauty, I am a lucky boy.

"If you look at the last five years, if you look at what major innovations have occurred in computing technology, every single one of them came from AMD. Not a single innovation came from Intel." -- AMD CEO Hector Ruiz in 2007