What to say about a television commercial where a photocopier turns into a lawnmower? I’m no hi-tech maven but even I know that’s a bit of a morph.

But Hewlett-Packard’s new 30-second spot, ‘Mower,’ takes us there.

The scene is (presumably) the Hewlett-Packard plant although it has more of a laboratory feel: everything is bright and white. A dweebie announcer guy with horn-rimmed glasses and a red polka dot bow tie speaks directly into the camera as if he’s a science reporter. He tells us that he’s there with the group of engineers who designed the new Hewlett-Packard 5Si ‘mopier.’ The engineers are kind of a strange bunch: they range from nerdy to surpisingly thuggy and include the obligatory token female.

Their copier d’es all sorts of neat stuff like collate, staple and print multiple originals (shot of scrolling down the menu to ‘print’) ­ in fact it d’es everything except mow the lawn. ‘Mow the lawn’ ech’es hypnotically, backed by magical musical sounds as the engineers standing around admiring their new baby suddenly look at each other with dreamy expressions on their faces as if they’ve all just had the same brilliant idea.

The next thing you know, they’ve gone back to the drawing board and much murmuring and diagramming and tinkering ensues. Hardware gets dumped out on a table. They try to figure out where the fan will go. Circus music plays as they delve into the soul of the new machine and they need it to keep up their spirits as they come up with a few wankers before everything clicks. (My favorite moment is when they scroll down the computer screen menu to ‘mow.’)

Still, it seems only seconds (although that might have something to do with the magic of television) before we’re watching an even better new Hewlett-Packard model that not only collates, staples and prints multiple originals, but mows the lawn too! The announcer looks disbelieving. I look impressed: this thing works a lot better than my old clunker at home. I don’t need photocopies at home but I’m thinking of buying into the h-p experience just because my grass is getting so long.

The tag line comes up: ‘Built by engineers. Used by normal people.’ They could have added ‘Thought up by good creatives.’ by Paula Costello

Roll credits

Production house: Propaganda

Director: Jeff Goodby

Agency: Goodby Silverstein & Partners

Agency producer: Cindy Sluitt