COMMENTARY--Does that annoying Intel noise we keep hearing on TV signify something more sinister than just an irritating jingle?
Since I was a marketing person in a past life, I'm sometimes mystified by the decisions IT companies make in promoting themselves.
Say you were a new Internet service provider and you wanted to give the impression that your service was very fast. Would you call it "Internet that flies" and then choose an extinct flightless bird to get this message across?
The marketing ploy that really raises my blood pressure is that infuriating Intel noise. Think about it: someone was paid a lot of money to come up with that three-second bit of noise that has been repeated so endlessly on TV.
But why does Intel do it? Why bother with the whole Intel Inside and Centrino campaigns? And why do PC manufacturers ruin their own perfectly good ads by including the Intel noise in them?
The answer to the last question is a badly kept secret. Intel pays PC manufacturers up to 70 percent of the cost of their TV ads--all they need to do in return is put in the Intel graphic and noise.
You'd think Intel was fairly low down the list of companies that needed to do a lot of advertising. It has a commanding market share of the consumer and business PC processor space and a level of power and influence in the industry that means computer manufacturers from small to multinational generally do exactly what Intel tells them to.
The problem Intel faces is a much broader one. For decades, people have been buying new PCs. The software industry--particularly Microsoft--could be relied on to keep writing more bloated and processor-intensive software; an incentive to buy the latest in processing power.
These days, the average two-year-old home PC can do just as many exciting things as the latest model--albeit a little slower. Meanwhile businesses are trying to extend the lives of their IT investments by lengthening the three-year lifecycle that until recently they adhered to religiously. And they're starting to wonder what to do with all those spare processor cycles that go to waste while employees are doing spreadsheets and other non-processor-taxing activities.
| -The implication was that unless you have a Pentium 4 in your PC, your kids will never go to university because they won't be able to edit photos or surf the Internet." |
The prime example of this is Intel's recent Centrino campaign. Intel is one of several companies that produce wireless networking chips for notebooks and there's not a lot of difference between Intel's wireless chips and anyone else's.
Intel can't compete with other wireless chipmakers on merit, since it has none. Intel instead chooses to come up with a meaningless "certification", Centrino, which simply means a notebook contains certain Intel-manufactured parts.
Readers of T&B would realise that a notebook with a non-Intel wireless chip would work just as well as a Centrino notebook. However, Intel's TV ads aren't aimed at T&B readers, but at the less technically knowledgeable public.
The implication of all Intel's Centrino advertising, in the mind of the consumer, is that without a Centrino notebook, you won't be able to connect to public wireless access points, for instance. With the Intel Inside campaign, the implication was that unless you have a Pentium 4 in your PC, your kids will never go to university because they won't be able to edit photos or surf the Internet.
PC makers know this, and that's why the play along with Intel's demands, whacking Intel Inside or Centrino stickers on their PCs and notebooks, and putting that noise in their ads.
While Intel's doing the entire industry a great service by increasing consumer awareness of these technologies, it's also filling its own pockets at the expense of competitors who can't afford to match its ad spending. In the long run, that can't be good for the industry or end users.
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