To me, the main mistake was the series of commercials giving the strong impression that IBM already had this incredible Artificial General Intelligence that was indistinguishable from a highly intelligent human and was solving a myriad of difficult practical problems better than any expert. I suspect that most who were well-versed in AI felt the ads were disingenuous from the start. I know I did. I think the marketing campaign would have better served IBM had it laid out their commitment to achieve these things without sounding like they were already there.