Some of our younger readers may not recall the “Dude, you’re getting a Dell” television spots where an extremely knowledgeable college-aged guy intervenes during shopping trips to talk parents into buying Dell PCs for their kids. The spots ran from 2000 to 2003, and were pretty memorable. (Memorable enough that readers still refer to them, ten years on, when complaining to us about Dell.) As Dell’s sales and reputation have fallen, they’re considering going private, and even Microsoft might invest. But maybe there’s another solution to the company’s woe’s. Bring back the Dell Dude.

Actor Ben Curtis played the character while he was a theatre student at NYU. (He lost the gig in 2003 after he was busted while buying pot, a story that Consumerist would have been all over at the time had we existed.) Dell’s market share and prestige have fallen since. Curtis tells Bloomberg’s Tech Blog: he can totally help with that.

He laid out his business plan in an e-mail to Bloomberg:

I think they’re making a huge mistake and simply need to bring back the Dell Dude! That’s it.That’s all they need to do. If they brought me back, their sales, stock and media presence would skyrocket. That is by FAR the smartest move they could make.

They could, of course, also work on their sales procedures, products, and support.

‘Dell Dude’ Says He Can Fix Dell [Bloomberg]

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