New Ad Campaign Compares Dell To The Hot, New Startup It Used To Be

Dell is heading into 2014 a new company, and it's airing a brand new commercial on New Year's Eve to let everybody know.

In October, founder Michael Dell and the investment firm Silver Lake Partners completed a $24.9 billion buyout of the company to take it private and turn the PC giant into an enterprise solutions and cloud computing company.

He announced the buyout in February, but spent a chunk of the year fending off powerful investor Carl Icahn, who tried stopping the deal.

Now, the former PC giant has released an ad to show how its reinvention will be guided by the spirit of entrepreneurship that led Michael Dell to start calling his company "the world's largest startup."

The "Beginnings" ad shows recreations of the humble birthplaces of companies using Dell services. It ends with the dorm room Dell started selling computers from back in 1984. There's the pizza shop Trip Advisor was born in, the small bedroom Skype came from, and the bus on which Dropbox began:

Y&R New York created the spot, which will premiere on television on "Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve With Ryan Seacrest." It's part of Dell's "The Power To Do More" campaign launched this year.

By tying itself to successful companies like Whole Foods and promoting startups, Dell is taking the vigor that made it a PC manufacturing giant (and its founder the youngest ever CEO of a Fortune 500 company in 1992) and applying it to its role as a services provider, much like IBM and HP have done.

This campaign falls in line with Dell's announcement of a $300 million startup fund in December, which significantly grew the company's commitment to fostering innovation.