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You can't go to the store and buy an Intel computer. This may come as a surprise to some consumers, since the "Intel Inside" marketing campaign has given its computer chips a level of brand awareness usually reserved for products shoppers can pluck off supermarket shelves.
On the television screen, Intel's commercials use dazzling special effects to take viewers swooping through a microcomputer's internal crests and canyons on a minute-long ride that recalls the climax of Star Wars. In business and news publications, as well as the expected computer titles, the Inteljafkl; Inside logo--a scrawl inside a swoosh--pops up on eight thousand pages per month in Intel's own ads and in ads for OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) such as Dell and Compaq for which Intel supplies coop funding. In the first two years of the campaign, $250 million in advertising has appeared, with Intel contributing an estimated $100 million and the OEMs picking up the rest. The Intel Inside logo also appears on stickers that OEMs affix to PCs and the boxes they are packed in.
Intel makes something with considerably less mystique than sneakers or soda. Its microprocessors are a component, and, like any product sold business to business, they're potentially a commodity. In 1991, a number of companies were moving into the chip market, and Intel needed a way to differentiate itself.
At that point, the conventional wisdom that all PCs had the same stuff inside led computer buyers to base their purchase decisions on price alone. Intel's agenda was to fend off growing competition in the 386 chip market, stake out its turf in the emerging 486 market, and persuade computer owners to upgrade to the new chip.
"When we started the campaign, end users weren't very aware of Intel at all," says Sally Fundakowski, director of processor brand marketing at Intel in Santa Clara, California. "They didn't know we were a microprocessor company--or even what a microprocessor was."
By linking its chip to household names like IBM and Compaq, the company gained recognition with PC buyers, notes David Aaker, a professor of marketing strategy at the University of California, Berkeley. It planted the lasting impression that Intel makes something worth paying more for, says Aaker, author of Managing Brand Equity (Free...