Earlier this year, Ernie blogged about Intel’s latest television ad campaign highlighting co-inventor of the USB port Ajay Bhatt. All good, except Bhatt is portrayed by an actor in the commercial, most likely for comedic effect. Well, the other night, Conan O’Brien interviewed the real Ajay Bhatt — convenient for him, as Intel is one of The Tonight Show’s biggest sponsors and wanted to highlight one of their “rock stars.” I guess if you are a major sponsor, you get to call some of the shots.
Conan was actually pretty funny interviewing Ajay, trying to get him to diss the other co-inventor, as well as the major competitor to USB, Firewire. Ajay did point out and ask where Firewire is today (mostly only on Macs; maybe you have to live in Silicon Valley to really appreciate the humor.) In any case, Conan got Ajay to make a spoof of the Intel commercial with him in the actual spoof – which doesn’t make sense at all on paper, but was pretty funny. I think the real Ajay Bhatt could have done a perfectly fine job in the actual Intel commercial.
