How Intel became a Household Brand
Things change, even if we don’t want them to. No company operating in the free market can be successful in perpetuity by delivering the same products with the same marketing and the same profit margins. While it is easy and natural to crave consistency and avoid risk, the changing nature of life and our environment requires us to change, to adapt, and to take chances in order to survive.
If there is one thing that distinguishes Intel’s innovative thinking, it is their 1990s strategy of branding its mainstay semiconductor chip. For the first time, the semiconductor chip was marketed as a valuable feature that consumers should look towards when purchasing a computer. The campaign’s two decades of ubiquity make us forget this now. However, at the time this was an incredibly novel approach. People bought computers because of the software, the specifications, or upon a friend’s recommendation. Who cared about who made some tiny chip inside a box that on couldn’t even see?
The mass proliferation of PCs around this time aided matters. Consumers were at a loss in differentiating one new PC from the next or in what made one PC necessarily better than the others. Enter Intel into the fray. The company saw an opportunity, took a major risk, and invested millions of dollars into this novel branding effort. Intel’s leadership was convinced this was the way to grow market share.
The plan was to shift the image of Intel from
a semiconductor chip manufacturer to
a producer of a coveted, brand-name product
that stood for performance.
Intel’s strategy was to go all out in the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) by rolling out ever-larger, more elaborate and immersive exhibits which would showcase the company’s cutting-edge technology. Visitors would not forget the “Intel experience” and would come away feeling like they had touched the future. By using an amazing multimedia cascading exhibit, Intel would convey to the audience that it was way ahead of almost everyone else. The same impression could not be felt through reading a two-dimensional ad in a magazine or watching a television commercial. Intel also cleverly used its CEO keynote and marketing during the show, with distinctive signage, publications and live events to ensure that every CES visitor knew about "Intel inside".
Intel used the live experience to change the very perception of its company, its products, and its importance.
Soon, consumers looked for that label before buying a computer, much in the same way that they looked for the American Dental Association Seal of Acceptance when shopping for a toothpaste. By marketing itself in this way, Intel transformed into a brand known to millions of otherwise technology-illiterate consumers. Those consumers might not have known a motherboard from a mainframe, but they had “Intel Inside.”
The Intel marketing campaign brought to light 3 key observations:
First, a clever company can create something out of almost nothing by thinking outside the box. (or inside the box in Intel's case)
Intel turned a chip into a brand and that brand into billions in added sales.
Second, Intel’s success reveals the power of trade shows to create an indelible live, interactive marketing experience. Intel captured the critical influencers who attended the CES trade show, including the media, retailers, and Wall Street. Intel’s marketing wizardry impressed upon them that the company was becoming not just another chip fabricator, but a brand in its own right
Finally, Intel teaches us the value of a visible CEO in enhancing and transforming the image of a company. Almost every other year, Intel CEO Craig Barrett delivered a keynote address at CES. (His successor, Paul Otellini, delivered the CES keynote in 2012.) Barrett used every second of his allotted sixty minutes to demonstrate how Intel “got” the future. The audience perception was that Intel was at the center of the product offerings of so many other companies. The CEO would not only convey factual information about the company and its products, but also leave every audience member impressed by the importance and future of Intel.
And now guess what else is powered by INTEL?
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This is going to be
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Wait for it...
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Dary
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Legendary!!!
