I’ve never understood these big advertising campaigns for companies that make things that everyday consumers can’t even buy.
Intel is revving one up now — $100 million-plus worth. The gigantic Santa Clara chip company is known for big, omnipresent splashes — flashy, arguably funny, admittedly memorable. But what am I supposed to do amid the promotional barrage? Go down to Wal-Mart and pick up a Centrino 2 microprocessor with my new rod and reel? Or maybe run down to Fry’s and tell them I’m not buying any laptop that doesn’t have Intel inside?
Well, no. And yes.
Look. As consumers, we’re sheep. Show us a few thousand Intel television commercials, billboards, banner ads, print promotions and social-networking come-ons and we’ll chant “Intel, Intel, Intel” all the way down to the local gizmo store.
H. Buford Barr, a semiconductor industry veteran who teaches marketing at Santa Clara University, says Intel was a leader in building a household name for a company that makes no recognizable household products. Back in 1991, when many were just becoming familiar with personal computers, Intel gave shoppers a way to differentiate one from another with its “Intel Inside” campaign.
“Little old ladies went in there and said, ‘Give me the Intel inside,’ ” Barr says. “They didn’t know what it was, but at least they had an attribute.”
And now that Intel is moving its technology into consumer fields beyond PCs and laptops — think netbooks, smart-phones, WiMax and generations of devices to come — it might make sense for the company to invest in making sure the buying public keeps Intel on the tip of its tongue, he says. Or branded on its soul.
So, I’m not here to argue with success. I’m here to point out that there are a number of good things about this latest batch of ads, which you’ll begin encountering next week. First, the Blue Man Group is in no way involved. Remember those Blue Man Group ads starting back in the early 2000s? So very disturbing.
And there’s nobody in brightly colored Mylar bunny suits dancing around to disco music. OK, the stars of those commercials from the late 1990s were cute, but they presented a bit of a PR land mine with the prospect of drunken frat boys dressing up as Intel’s BunnyPeople for Halloween. (For whatever reason, the fraternity brothers called Intel to ask permission. Intel, which has trademarked the BunnyPeople, said no. “You don’t want to see a Bunny Person beer-bonging at UC-Berkeley,” an Intel executive told me then.)
The coming ads and a related global marketing campaign are all about poking fun at Intel’s geek culture.
One TV spot plays off the cult status certain technologists obtain in certain circles in Silicon Valley. It opens with an Indo-American engineer in a sweater vest striding into a company cafeteria for a coffee refill. Men stand in awe. Women swoon. The crowd crushes in for autographs. On-screen text identifies the actor as Intel’s Ajay Bhatt, co-inventor of the USB. And the punch line? “Our Rock Stars Aren’t Like Your Rock Stars.”
The new commercials have something in common with the BunnyPeople campaign, says Heather Dixon, an Intel consumer marketing director. “The BunnyPeople were probably the closest thing to what resembled the essence of what Intel is about: funny, quirky, nutty, different.”
Really? Funny, quirky, nutty, different? Intel?
Yes, Dixon says, in that what Intel engineers do for fun isn’t necessarily what the rest of us do for fun. Things like spending their free time talking algorithms. Or maybe doing a little linear algebra over lunch.
Which has me thinking this new ad campaign might be good for chip sales, but not so good for the dating prospects of Intel engineers.
Then again, when it comes to world chip domination, sometimes you just have to take one for the team.
Contact Mike Cassidy at mcassidy@mercurynews.com or 408-920-5536.