It’s not magic. It’s science.

That’s the familiar spirit of a new campaign from Dell Technologies—the company’s first major advertising rollout since forming via the merger of Dell and EMC last fall.

Westworld actor Jeffrey Wright plays spokesman in a series of ads emphasizing the corporation’s computing contributions to a range of industries. Y&R created the campaign, and Academy Award winner Tom Hooper directs.

In the 1:00 centerpiece, Wright editorializes to the camera during a school play. “Magic is pretty amazing,” he says. “It can transform a frog into a prince. And sadness into happily ever after.” But kids’ stuff quickly gives way to big, dramatic business declarations, as Wright rattles off a list of ways Dell is changing familiar objects—jet planes, milk cows, hospital beds—into futuristic information systems.

His pitch comes complete with dazzling sci-fi light effects, and bovine satellite linkups. “It’s not the simple wave of a wand,” he says. “It’s people and technology working together to transform impossible into reality.”

“Magic can’t make digital transformation happen, but we can,” he concludes. “Let’s make it real.”

That tagline anchors a handful of smaller, narrower :30 spots, zooming in on Dell’s partnerships with other companies—GE for aerospace diagnostics, Columbia Sportswear for cloud services, Chitale Dairy for internet-connected cows—as Wright offers more detail on the workings and purpose of each, before delivering the same promise.

At its heart, it’s a rah-rah twist on Arthur C. Clarke’s third law—that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. That adage is fast becoming a cliché among tech companies desperate to make their opaque offerings digestible—even emotionally compelling—to the luddite masses. Apple, for example, has distilled that same basic concept into its own tagline, “Practically Magic,” if perhaps executed it with more immediacy.

The new Dell campaign is certainly carefully crafted, and in some ways beautifully presented—meticulously written, deftly staged and well acted, with plenty of eye candy mixed in, with certain elements, like VFX company Framestore’s projection mapping, achieved using Dell technology.

A behind-the-scenes video benefits, though, from being a little less stiff, and less willfully dramatic—Wright explains more conversationally why the idea matters, and why consumers might care about Dell. In that moment it’s hard to shake the impression that the marketer, in its rush to make its sales pitch seem larger than life, might have forgotten to make it feel human.

In fact, the casual bootstrap kicker, “Let’s make it real,” apparently meant to draw audiences into the mission, may end up muddying the message, and the target. Dell, no longer just a personal computing and hardware company, is trying to reintroduce itself to consumers, but also pitching its suite of cloud and IT software services to businesses—and doing both at the same time is a tall order.

To be fair, it doesn’t help Dell’s case that some elements of its argument are well-known at this point. GE emphasizes its networked industrial machinery in its own advertising (connected, self-diagnosing jet engines are not news at this point). It’s also run its own series on “Unimpossible Missions,” proving its technology in fresh ways. Companies like Cisco, meanwhile, have for years been running advertising celebrating the delightful successes and wild possibilities of rapidly advancing information systems—a dynamic Dell arguably itself captured better in its past “Future Ready” campaign.

The biggest problem with its new message, though, in the end, may be that it doesn’t know whether to embrace the wonder that its technology facilitates—or reduce that sense of magic to nuts and bolts.

CREDITS

Dell Technologies

Chief Marketing Officer – Jeremy Burton

SVP Global Brand and Creative – Liz Matthews

Director Brand Strategy and Advertising – Rachael Henke

Brand Strategy and Advertising – Valerie Daubert

Y&R

Global Executive Creative Director – Christian Carl

Global Creative Director – Thomas Shim

Copywriter, Creative Director – Justin Ebert

Executive Producer – Bobby Jacques

Content Producer – Nicole Lederman

Sr Business Manager- Maggie Diaz

President, Global Technology & Business Practice – Joe Rivas

Account Director- Heather Hosey

Group Account Director – Rachel Krouse

Account Executive- George Rainaldi

Strategic Planning Director – Jenna Rounds

Production Company: Smuggler

Director: Tom Hooper

Co Founder: Brian Carmody

Executive Producer: Shannon Jones

DP: Justin Brown

Line Producer: Alex Lisee

Edit House: Rock Paper Scissors

Editor (It’s Not Magic): Adam Pertofsky

Editor (GE, Columbia, Chitale): Ted Guard

Executive Producer: Eve Kornblum

Producer: Jenny Greenfield

VFX: Framestore NY

Dez Macleod-Veilleux – Executive Producer

Maura Hurley – Senior Producer

David Mellor – Creative Director

Gigi Ng – Senior Flame Artist / VFX Supervisor

Georgios Cherouvim – Senior CG Lead

Dan Soloman – Senior Designer

Karch Coon – Senior Compositor

Callum McKeveny – Concept Designer / Senior Matte Painter

Color: Company 3

Colorist: Tim Masick

Sound: Sound Lounge

Mixer/Sound Designer – Tom Jucarone

Projection Mapping: Go 2 Productions

Music: duotone audio group

Executive Producer: Ross Hopman

Creative Director: Jack Livesey

Producer: Gio Lobato