You’ve got to feel for the PC. While there's no denying its practicality or gaming chops, ever since IBM dropped the first beige box of PC joy on the world over three decades ago, the PC has never really managed to be cool—and for the likes of Intel, Microsoft, HP, Dell, and Lenovo fighting against a declining market that's a problem.

So the five of them have teamed up to take on Apple and make the PC cool again, or at least encourage people to upgrade from their five-year-old PCs—of which Intel says there are over 500 million out there—to shiny new laptops with touch-screens, and thin metal enclosures, and longer battery life. The result of their collective marketing prowess is the "PC Does What?" campaign, a collection of short TV ads set to run in the US and China in the coming months.

According to the AP, the campaign will cost upwards of $70 million (£45 million).

Fortunately, for those wondering what exactly a "PC Does What?" ad might look like, Intel has uploaded short snippets of them to YouTube, and, well, they're a little cringe-worthy. The first, involving a helicopter rescue, shows a rescue-worker hopping in a chopper as she flips her shiny new Lenovo Yoga over to use as tablet, to which a marshal on the ground exclaims "PC does what?!" Gripping stuff.

This is followed by a shot of the co-pilot blasting out Kenny Loggins’ "Danger Zone" on his HP laptop with "state-of-the-art sound," and another of a man stranded at sea making use of the sweet "18 hour" battery life of a Dell XPS 13. Oh, and a lot of people shout "PC does what?" repeatedly. Perhaps they'll go down better with the public than they have at the Ars office.

Still, speaking to Digiday, marketing agency MCD Partners said that the partnership between the PC makers felt desperate: "Campaigns in which multiple competitive brands with common vested interests come together rarely succeed." Ted Florea from brand agency PNYC suggested that the tagline itself is misguided. "Not knowing what a PC does is a failure of all the players involved to stay relevant," he said.

The full suite of ads is in the embedded video above, so let us know what you think in the comments. Is "PC does what?" a good slogan? Why didn't the desktop get any love? And will the ad encourage people to pick up a PC, or put them off a purchase instead?