Branding is not an IT topic, exactly, but brand considerations bleed into the uses of e-commerce and communications technology. In this case, the main channel was satellite television, but images of AIG’s logo could be seen in a variety of media, including print and online, throughout the world owing to the carrier’s sponsorship of Manchester United’s victory over Chelsea in the UEFA Champions League final yesterday in Moscow. Man United, whose nickname is “the Red Devils,” or “Reds,” for short, also won the English Premier League title for the 2007-08 season.

AIG has participated in the recent wave of insurance television advertising exemplified by Nationwide’s “Life Comes at you Fast,” campaign and AFLAC’s “There’s Only One” animal comparisons. Last night I saw AIG’s “Can’t Sleep” ad, which features a little boy walking into his parents’ room. His mother asks, “Did you have a nightmare?” The child answers,

No, I’m worried about this family’s financial future. Does your retirement plan provide predictability of income and protection against market risk? Do you have good supplemental health insurance? What about estate planning? Car insurance? Dents are easy to fix but liability’s the nightmare!

The father replies with tiresome predictability, “Buddy, we’re with AIG!”

Perhaps some people find the hyper-precocious child trope amusing. I find it irritating, both for its contrivance and its tin-eared caricature of intelligent childhood. Few things are as charming as truly articulate children, and there is something proportionately distasteful about the spectacle of a child obviously parroting adult speech. To make matters worse, the child actor in the AIG ad assumes a posture as unrealistic as his lines, making him appear as if he were suspended from marionette wires.

At least the ad is brief, and it's not as bad as those grotesque ads that project images of adult mouths speaking full-grown inanities onto the faces of infants. The AIG kid is cute in an idiosyncratic way and obviously very gifted. I can only wish that he’s allowed to be himself in future gigs.

It may be that annoying ads are effective as pleasing ones. However, I can’t help thinking there’s some advantage in the reassuring presence of Dennis Haysbert in the Allstate ads and the Cockney charm of GEICO’s gecko. Similarly, one has to believe that AIG benefits enormously not just from the frequency of exposure that comes with a brand such as Man U, but also, as in the case of Accenture’s Tiger Woods ads, the association with a winner.

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