Intel Corp (INTC)

[morrowinder]

Chipguy: marketing more voodoo than science:)

Honestly, I think this reflects more on internal politics than anything. Eric Kim was brought in from Samsung to be Intel's prince of marketing. He initiated the Intel inside logo change and platform branding strategy(Viiv, Centrino, Vpro). Unfortunately Centrino was the only one that really worked. VIIV was a complete disaster(even we didn't know what it was:P) Funniest thing ever was watching AMD market live as rival. Funniest Sh@T ever:)

Kim was banished to the Desktop Group and a new set of marketeers took over. In my opinion they are pretty vanilla and nothing special:( New commercials suck...

You can get a read on marketing by their current buzzwords. "Hero brand" is the new buzzword and apparently "core" is it. This is classic Intel Factory think...

I think part of the problem is that a product brand gets stale and undifferentiated over time and it genuninely needs refreshing. And regardless of what we geeks think, the CPU is often not at the top of the average shopper's list. Part of this is a natural effect of commoditization.

But the nightmare for Intel's marketing right now is how do they stay in front of the consumer and be relevant as an ingredient brand(very few ingredient brands are successful). And how do they make the CPU the center of the PC universe. Or if thats not possible, how do they get people to upgrade to their terrific new architecture and even understand why its better? Or failing that even recognize that something has changed:(