Intel Shies From "Inside" in B2B Campaign
The chipmaker is embarking on a new advertising effort -- its largest yet -- to reach business buyers and extend its foothold in the enterprise market.
Intel is embarking on a new, multi-million dollar advertising campaign — it’s biggest ever — in a bid to inject new energy into its pitch to business decision makers.
The Santa Clara, Calif.-based chipmaking giant’s new “Yes” campaign, designed by New York-based Euro RSCG MVBMS, aims to brand Intel chips as innovative, stable and reliable.
It also seeks to promote the company behind those chips as not just a leader in microprocessors — computing history buffs will recall the company developed the first microprocessor in 1969 — but also as a leader in other forms of computing technology, having developed technologies like DRAM
The campaign, which drops the company’s old “Intel Inside” consumer slogan, will cover all of Intel’s enterprise computing lines, ranging from chips used in mobile devices to those in high-end servers. Its first ads debut in print on Tuesday.
Spending was not disclosed, though Intel said the effort entailed the company’s single-largest advertising commitment in its 34-year history.
The ads show questions — “Do Intel engineers have a secret formula for success?” On a following page, the answer in the same execution reads: “Yes. And the key ingredient in the Intel formula is this: our core belief that advanced engineering will continue to increase the performance of computing year after year. And deliver the tools that make businesses run better.”
Another ad asks, “Will Moore’s Law stand forever?” in reference to the widely-cited “law,” originated by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore in 1965, which states (in various forms) that the number of transistors per inch on a chip would grow exponentially every year. But the theory has come under criticism on concerns that growth in chip density ultimately would be limited by sub-atomic properties — a obstacle that Intel waves away, citing its history of innovation.
“Intel has developed new technologies that will allow us to squeeze one billion transistors on a chip (a far cry from the 2,300 on our first processor). This isn’t science for science’s sake. It’s science for your company’s sake. Because as we work to fulfill Moore’s Law, year after year, companies everywhere can do more at lower cost. And that’s not just a good law. It’s very good business.”
Other ads in the campaign ask, “Can a company that doesn’t make computers change the course of computing history?” and “Can a microscopic piece of technology solve enterprise-sized problems?”
In addition to print elements debuting Tuesday in the U.S., print ads will follow in global markets in coming months. Outdoor and online ads also are slated for the campaign.
“The ‘Yes’ campaign reflects the confidence business customers have when they use our computing products across all parts of the enterprise,” said Jane Price, director of Business Marketing at Intel. The campaign “complements the success we’ve seen this year for enterprise adoption of Intel-based products.”
The effort takes Intel’s advertising in a new direction. Since the early 90s, when the “Intel Inside” slogan debuted, the company has been focusing on marketing itself to consumers. The campaign’s ads, which has featured dancers clad in bunny suits and IBM
.
But with sluggish consumer PC spending, Intel and other big-name hardware companies have been encouraged to focus more of their energies into the enterprise market. As a result, the company’s new campaign will seek to reach business leaders just as the chipmaker plans a number of new product releases for corporate use. The company’s high-end Itanium processor line, its lower-end Xeon server processor line, and its Pentium processor line are all slated to receive updates this year.
