'Intel Inside' was named the most memorable advertising jingle by UK consumers last year, even beating Jamster's infamous Crazy Frog ringtone, according to a YouGov poll. Not bad for a firm that makes computer chips and doesn't sell to consumers.
Despite the success of 'Intel Inside', which was launched in 1991 and has played a major role in turning the chip manufacturer into the world's fifth most-valuable brand (Interbrand), it dropped the tagline at the start of this year. The move is part of a marketing overhaul (see box) that aims to position Intel at the heart of the digital home with a brand refresh, new tagline - 'Leap Ahead' - and a reported $2 billion (£1.13m) global push.
With the campaign, Intel is focusing its advertising efforts online, where it expects to place most of its future activity. Consequently, it has appointed former European ad manager David Mitchell as its first head of interactive marketing for EMEA, and is creating an equivalent role in the US.
Mitchell, after a decade at the company, will now dedicate his time to developing Intel's interactive advertising strategy. With the brand rapidly shifting more of its consumer ad spend away from TV and print to the internet - up from 10 per cent a few years ago to about a third in 2006 - it's a major task.
Digital home
Getting the digital communications strategy right is key since the firm's new Viiv technology, launched in January, is all about digital media (see box, p33). Intel is the largest manufacturer of chips for PCs, but digital technology in the home is converging.
Intel Viiv was designed with this in mind and aims to be the platform for a new generation of PCs, which offer consumers access to on-demand entertainment services and enables them to store all their digital media.
Mitchell, after one month in the job, is full of enthusiasm and convinced the rebrand will only work with the help of digital. "As we went through the reinvigoration of the brand, it became obvious that we had a 'disconnect' between our advertising and what we do on the web," he explains.
"We've got some great web sites, but they're focused on a very high-end, technical audience and they don't really match up with the consumer advertising audience we have. So my role is look at how we really take our interactive marketing and web presence to the next stage."
This will involve a major overhaul of Intel's web site (www. intel.com), and the company is in early talks with its global, digital creative agency, MRM Partners, about the design of the new site. Mitchell says that, while the technical audience is still very important to Intel, the wider consumer audience is online, so the site needs broader appeal.
It faces the challenge of targeting both businesses and consumers, but, as Mitchell points out, they are often the same person. Alastair Duncan, UK chief executive of MRM, believes that, just because you're talking to a technical audience, doesn't mean the message has to be boring. "We need to treat them as people rather than just technicians," he says. "Intel is a great brand and there's some really cool stuff we can do." Mitchell says there are some surprising ways that you can engage with people, highlighting an online game developed by MRM last year to help push Intel's network communications products. "It's the really techie stuff that drives the network, so it's not the most exciting. We put together a video computer game where you have to go and solve a crime scene, but in the course of solving the crime you learn all about our products and technology." So far, the game has been downloaded about 62,000 times.
The new-look web site will be given more of a consumer focus and feature more interactive and engaging content. Intel also plans to step up its online marketing activity and make it more engaging. Mitchell admits that, although the company has done some good interactive campaigns, it needs cohesion.
In the UK, the media focus will be online. UK ad manager Simon Shipley says: "2006 is the first year in which online will be the key channel, with support from TV and other media. For the new Viiv platform, advertising will be almost exclusively online," he reveals.
This makes sense since research carried out by Intel's media agency, Universal McCann, estimates that 96 per cent of its target audience is on the web. "When all of your audience is online, you can start to buy online in the same way as you buy TV, to get reach and frequency," says Mitchell.
But, he also points out that the beauty of online is its ability to target niche audiences. "The more you can define your audience, the more interactive and interesting you can be. If you want to get people to respond, you've got to appeal to a certain part of that person's character. Not everybody will have that characteristic, so the broader you go, the fewer characteristics you can plug into.
"The web is an incredibly personal experience," Mitchell adds. "You're not part of a mass audience, all sitting in front of the TV watching the same thing. You're doing things that are entirely personal; your music is personal, the web sites you visit are personal. Even if you're visiting the same sites as everyone else, you'll be going through them in a different way. So, the trick for a brand is to break through that and get the person who's interacting with you to think 'they're talking to me', and that's where we really want to get to - 'Intel is talking to me'."
Elite media
Prior to the Viiv launch, the company developed an online buzz campaign, specifically targeted at raising awareness among an audience Shipley describes as "elite media enthusiasts". The promotion enabled consumers to create their own 'mash-up' - multimedia clips combining music, video and audio - and enter them into a competition. "This audience is not commercially available anywhere else. We couldn't have reached them using banners and Skyscraper ads," he says. "They have a community of their own and the only way to reach them is through viral, but that can't be in a corporate way as they wouldn't accept it."
Other successful initiatives to target specific audiences have included sponsorship of UK PC gaming team 4 Kings and, more recently, a football promo for Intel's Centrino mobile technology. As part of the game sponsorship, Intel organised and filmed events between 4 Kings and other teams in Europe and created three, 30-minute programmes of each event. These carried Intel branding and included team interviews and tactics, gameplay, and behind-the-scenes footage. Available on gaming sites and forums, they were downloaded more than a million times.
"To me, that really brought home that if you can find a passionate audience who have access to broadband and can create content they care about, they'll come in their millions to watch it," says Mitchell.
For the football promotion, which ran over Christmas and in January, Intel offered free online content from 15 leading premiership clubs, which normally has to be paid for. This included video-streaming, goals and interviews, and linked back to the product via a competition encouraging fans to vote for their 'goal of the month' to win the latest Intel Centrino kit.
"It's a way of bringing the benefits of Intel to life in a relevant way," comments Jason Carter, UK managing director of Universal McCann Interactive, which handles Intel's digital media planning and buying. "If you offer something of value like this and link it to Intel, people will associate Intel with letting them have these great experiences. If you think about Intel as a brand, it is one of the technologies that helps empower people's digital experience. A lot of the cool stuff that you can do - digital gaming, music and entertainment - is enabled because of the chips that Intel produces."
Mitchell agrees: "We're in a world where more and more people are creating their own content. It's not about consumption, it's about creation. For Intel, as a company that's enabling that creation, it's a really exciting time because we can not only promote ourselves as a brand but also be part of the whole evolution process by enabling people to create their own content and express their opinions."
Brand perceptions
How Intel communicates with people online will determine how people perceive it as a brand. This is a key focus for the company as it transforms from being just a chip manufacturer to a platform provider, which began with the launch of Centrino. "We need to change people's perception of Intel from being just a chip company to being something that has much more to offer. Centrino was the first iteration of that and now we have Viiv, which is the platform for the digital home," says Mitchell.
He feels that online marketing is key to changing people's perceptions of Intel and showing them that it's a company that makes things happen.
"With the games promotion, we weren't just making chips, but we were making things possible for people, which perhaps they couldn't get any other way," he adds. "We will be doing some big things this year to start to raise awareness of our new look and message to people."
This will involve online activity around the company's recent technology partnership with BMW, which includes an estimated £30m deal to back the BMW Sauber F1 team. "We're doing an awful lot to try and activate that sponsorship, so people can see the relevance of why Intel is doing this and what Intel is bringing to BMW as a business. It's a lot more than a sponsorship," explains Mitchell.
Intel is currently in the process of creating a microsite to coincide with the first race of the season, which will aim initially to promote the sponsorship. "As time goes on, we'll start to look at how we can develop that further and really involve people in what we're doing with the team, and try to find new ways to engage people with a sport they may never have thought about before," he adds.
"But, all the time we are thinking, how do we leap ahead? How do we do that bit extra that shows the value of what Intel can do? And it comes back to our brand promise: it's not what we make, but what we make possible.
We've got to go out and make some exciting stuff possible - we're just trying to work out what that is."
INTEL'S NEW BRAND IDENTITY
Intel hired marketing guru Eric Kim - credited with turning Samsung into one of the world's fastest growing brands - 18 months ago.
As senior VP of its sales and marketing group, he was tasked with evolving the brand from a processor company into a platform provider.
The company has dropped its famous 'Intel Inside' tagline and 'dropped-e' logo, replacing it with a new one and 'Leap Ahead'.
The rebrand includes new logos for Intel Viiv and Intel Centrino mobile technology, and redesigned logos for individual processors, chipsets, motherboards and other Intel technologies.
Kim describes 'Leap Ahead' as "a simple expression that declares who we are and what we do. This is part of our heritage. Our mission has always been to find and drive the next leap ahead to continuously challenge the status quo."
David Mitchell, Intel head of interactive marketing, EMEA, says the new brand hierarchy is much clearer and simpler for people to understand.
He adds that, although the 'Intel Inside' logo has been dropped, the company will continue the huge marketing programme based around the idea, which will largely involve co-marketing deals with PC manufacturers and retailers.
INTEL VIIV
The Intel Viiv platform, launched in January, is being marketed as the platform for the digital home. It is Intel's effort to position itself at the heart of the convergence between personal computing and consumer electronics.
Intel says PCs based on Viiv will be easy to use via a remote control and will be powered by a suite of Intel technologies, including a dual-core processor, chipset, platform software and wired networking capabilities.
"It's a PC that doesn't look like a PC," says Mitchell. "It will allow you to view your digital photos, listen to music on MP3 players, be the personal video recorder for your TV programmes and allow you to access a load of content services on the web.
"It really is the start of the change to the living room, from having three or four boxes to having something you can store all your content in and interact with."
Intel has partnered a wide variety of movie, music, TV, gaming and photo-editing companies, with a view to giving users a broad choice of on-demand entertainment from the living room.
These companies include: MTV, BSkyB, Yahoo!, Google, AOL, Napster, LoveFilm, Adobe, Movielink and Turner Broadcasting.
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