INTEL'S NEW BRANDING CHOOSES NOT TO SELL

Intel plans to launch a new, 3-year branding campaign next Monday, and I think the inadvertent message is that there's no reason to buy a gizmo powered by one of its products. The inanity of the campaign belies some serious decision-making dysfunction.

The creative conceit contrasts common ideas of stardom with the geeky importance of the stars within Intel. So a print ad puts the line "Your rock stars" superimposed over a bevy of rockers (who look like the band Spinal Tap) next to a photo of two nudnick scientists labeled "Our rock stars." A TV spot has employees going berserk because the guy who invented USB walks by them.

Entitled "Sponsors of Tomorrow," the campaign will run in 30 countries by June, because, according to the VP of corporate marketing, "...we really needed to put some meaning into Intel, so 'Intel inside' means something again."

Meaning, eh? This thing means that the company couldn't come up with a reason why anybody should buy its products.

Intel and its agency wasted lots of time (and smarts) looking inward, analyzing the company's people and culture, and not outward, studying why consumers might value a device because of its Intel-ness. Because it's a component, and not the entire end-product, the marketers felt that they had to discover some unappreciated attribute, then associate it with the brand via lots of spending.

Will anybody care, or do anything because of it? No, it's branding, silly.

The real killer is that the company's original brief was to talk about Intel's role in everyday life. This was a functional-based idea that challenged the agencies to help realize how vital -- and, my guess, reliable, capable, valuable, and relevant -- its products were to people. It would have been a hard to make functions fun and engaging enough to influence consumer purchase decisions.
But it might also have helped sell stuff.

Instead, the agency discarded the approach because "it’s just really trite," and came up with a campaign that could have been produced for Microsoft, Sun, or just about any other technology brand. Or bank. Or floor polish.

A new branding campaign that told us real, meaningful reasons why we should want to buy things with Intel inside of them could have been a really smart move.
"Sponsors of Tomorrow" tells us only that Intel can't market its way out of a paper bag.

Intel Unveils Quad Core Q8400

After staying away from the limelight for a while, Intel has quietly introduced a new Core 2 Quad processor. This new Intel Core 2 Quad Q8400 will compete head-to-head with AMD Phenom II X4 940 which we have reviewed recently. Intel has also introduced low power variant Intel Core 2 Quad Q8400S. These processors were spotted in the April SKU pricing (PDF) list.

The new 45nm process Intel Core 2 Quad Q8400 is clocked at 2.66GHz with 4MB of L2 cache and 1333MHz front side bus with LGA 775 socket support. Essentially, Q8400 is a stripped down version of Q9400 which is clocked at 2.66GHz with 6MB L2 Cache and 1333 front side bus. Intel introduced Q8400 at price of $183 (Rs. 9,250 approx.), while the Q9400 is priced $213 (Rs. 10,700 approx.) and the difference lies in Q9400 having 1MB cache per dual-core die and virtualization support.

In terms of performance, Intel's Q8400 will bout with AMD Phenom II X4 which is clocked at 3.0GHz with 2MB L2 cache, 6MB L3 cache and TDP rating of 125W. But on the other hand, Intel Q8400 has Thermal Design Power rating of 95W. AMD's Phenom II X4 940 is priced at $190 (Rs. 9,600 approx.) on Newegg.com while Intel proposes to sell Q8400 at $183.

The low power 45nm process Intel Core 2 Quad Q8400S has Thermal Design Power rate of 65W carrying same specs as Q8400 but is priced at $245 (Rs. 12,400 approx.). The company has discounted price of Q9300 processor by 20 percent and of three low power Core 2 Quad processors by 13 percent.

Rackspace Sponsors Web 2.0 Info Site

Amidst the confusion of how to best make use of rapidly emerging web 2.0 technologies, a new online community, sponsored by web-hosting provider Rackspace (www.rackspace.com), endeavors to track the latest trends and help companies in all fields move their business operations into the 21st Century.

Launched last week, Building43 (www.building43.com) is designed to show how companies can make use of all the new online tools launching every day. Created by Rackspace's Rocky Barbanica, Rob Lagesse and Robert Scoble, Building43 seeks to answer questions such as "How do I use Twitter? How do I use Facebook? Do I need to develop an iPhone app? What technology am I not using that could help grow my business?"

Scoble, a popular blogger (www.scobleizer.com), technology evangelist and co-author of Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers, has posted on his blog that the lead-up to Building43's launch has taken up a lot of his efforts. "I'm up at 5am to help the team put the finishing touches on the site and thought it would be a good place to start my blog back up," Scoble posted. "Sorry for disappearing from my long-form blog for a while. I just didn't have the energy to write more than 140 characters or so."

Building43, however, will not only focus on connected high-tech professionals such as Scoble, who create loads of social content, but rather help regular companies and individuals take advantage of technologies that are driving business. One of the first posted items, for instance, is an interview with Facebook founder and chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg, where he gives his dad some ideas for how to use the Internet to promote his dentistry business.

In a Rackspace blog post, the company notes that its customers frequently ask what else Rackspace can do to help them. "There is one theme that comes up more than any other: Help me grow my business! While this strays from our core of offering on-demand computing services, today we are pleased to announce something that should help," Rackspace said.