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Case study:- Intel reinventing a technology brand

Introduction:

Intel celebrated its 50th anniversary in July 2018, ushering in a new era of growth brought about by its transformation from a PC-centric to a data-centric company. About half of its USD 70.8 billion in revenue in 2018 came from data-centric businesses which offered solutions to process, analyze, store, and transfer data (Intel Corporation, 2018). Since 2014, Intel had invested heavily in memory, artificial intelligence (AI), autonomous driving, and 5G to provide end-to-end platforms and solutions that enabled its customers to take advantage of the data-rich environment to generate actionable insights, build competitive advantages, and enhance customer experiences. Steven Fund, who joined Intel as its chief marketing officer (CMO) in the middle of 2014, realized that the brand had failed to evolve alongside Intel's business. "By definition, marketing yourselves as an ingredient brand means that you're invisible. We weren't getting credit for all of the experiences and the technology that we were dealing with," he said at the Interactive Advertising Bureau annual leadership meeting (Adams, 2018). Fund and his marketing team, together with agency partners, were tasked to reshape and create a more cohesive brand image and messaging across Intel's business-to-business (B2B) and business-to consumer (B2C) segments, especially engaging millennials as consumers and business decision-makers. However, there were several challenges that Fund and his marketing team faced. How could Intel reinvent and reposition its brand to better communicate and deliver its technologies in a way that would drive products and services in an increasingly smart, connected, and data-driven world? Would the "Intel Inside" message still resonate with its enterprise customers and end-user audiences, especially millennials? With the successful Intel Inside campaign, the company had created one of the world's most recognizable brandssince 2000, Intel had consistently been ranked as one of the top 15 most valuable global brands by Interbrand, a global brand consultancy (see Table 1). Interbrand's ranking of the world's best global brands valued Intel at USD 43.3 billion in 2018 (Interbrand, 2018)an impressive feat considering that Intel is essentially an invisible ingredient or component brand, albeit a major provider of key technologies such as chips, microprocessors, and solutions that power the cloud and millions of computers and connected devices.

Table 1. Interbrand Global Brand Ranking for Intel, 2000-2019

Year Rank Brand value (USD millions)

2000 4 39,048

2001 6 34,665

2002 5 30,861

2003 5 31,112

2004 5 33,499

2005 5 35,588

2006 5 32,319

2007 7 30,954

2008 7 31,261

2009 9 30,636

2010 7 32,015

2011 7 35,217

2012 8 39,385

2013 9 37,257

2014 12 34,153

2015 14 35,415

2016 14 36,952

2017 15 39,459

2018 11 43,293

2019 13 40,197

Source: "Best global brands in previous years," Interbrand. http://interbrand.com/best-brands/best-globalbrands/previous-years/; https://www.interbrand.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Best-GlobalBrands-2017.pdf https://www.interbrand.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Interbrand_Best_Global_Brands_2018.pdf; https://www.interbrand.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Interbrand_Best_Global_Brands_2019.pdf After Fund left Intel in 2018, Karen Walker took the position of CMO and faced additional challenges. Could Intel still leverage on its past and successful ingredient branding strategy targeting both enterprise customers and end users? Was it time to shift the focus to B2B branding or would that dilute the business-to-businessto-consumer (B2B2C) marketing strategies that had worked so well in the past?

Intel's Branding Journey:

How It Started:

Walker assumed the role of CMO 27 years after Intel embarked on its iconic branding journey. After a 1991 U.S. court decided that Intel could not get trademark protection for its "386" naming of its microprocessors, since it was a generic description, the company moved away from numeric branding to trademarked product brand names. The company called its fifth-generation microprocessors "Pentium" and focused on a campaign to strengthen Intel's corporate brand equity as the leading microprocessor company in the world (Keller, 2008). Since then, Intel's branding journey has evolved over the years with shifts in technology, involving changes in logo, slogan, and tagline, campaign messaging, and targeting, as well as the branch architecture. The progression in Intel's logos can be found online here.

Intel Inside (1991-2005) :

In March 1991, Dennis Carter, the then vice president of Intel's corporate marketing group, proposed a new processor branding strategy and launched the "Intel Inside" worldwide branding campaign. The genesis of this now well-known tagline came from the fusion of "The Computer Inside" tagline used in 1990 in the United States and Europe, and the "Intel in it" tagline proposed for Japan. Intel spent about USD 125 million over 18 months on a mix of print, billboard, and spot television advertising as part of this strategy (Intel Corporation, 2008). The participation of 240 original equipment manufacturing (OEM) partners in Intel's co-op advertising program was key to the success of the new Intel Inside branding campaign. Intel also advertised in computer trade publications and mainstream magazines such as Time to build awareness and promote brand loyalty in both the enterprise and end-user segments. The success of the Intel Inside campaign was measured by several advertising awards, including the best television campaign in 1992, and market research that reported a higher level of brand awareness among end users. More than 50% of respondents who saw the logo indicated it influenced their decision on which brand of personal computer to purchase (Intel Corporation, 2008). From 1991 to 2005, Intel consistently executed its ingredient branding strategy to communicate the benefits of its processors, targeting both B2B and B2C audiences. Under chief executive officer (CEO) Craig Barret, Intel leveraged humorous, slice-of-life situations in its commercials to highlight the benefits of performance, safety, reliability, compatibility, and upgradability of its processors. Intel also continued with its extensive cobranding programs for PC and server manufacturers supported by generous trade cooperative advertising budgets (Intel Corporation, 2005).

Intel: Leap Ahead (2005-2009):

In 2005, Intel saw some important changes, with a transition of leadership from Craig Barret to Paul Otellini. Otellini and Eric Kim, the new CMO, wanted to change Intel's branding. In his first annual report, Otellini asserted: "In 2005, we reported our 19th consecutive year of profitability, underwent our largest reorganization, embarked on a rebranding effort and helped usher in the dual-core eraa major technological leap in computing architecture" (Intel Corporation, 2005, p. 2). Towards the latter part of 2005, as Intel moved away from just microprocessors to focus on the entire platform, the company was ready to change the Intel Inside tagline and logo it had used since 1991. The Intel Inside campaign had focused solely on Intel's microprocessors, which were its Pentium line of chips, and Otellini and Kim decided it was time to move on from that focus. In January 2006, Intel officially launched a new brand identity campaign. Not only did it include a USD 2 billion global marketing campaign but also a revised brand architecture strategy that positioned Intel as a "marketdriving platform solutions company." Under Kim, Intel revamped its brand image with a new logo and slogan to strengthen the emotional connection with its audiences and its positioning as the market leader. The company redesigned its 37-year-old blue encircled Intel logo with a dropped "e" in the name. Marketing executives launched a new tagline called "Leap Ahead." Logos were redesigned for its platforms such as Intel Viiv and Intel Centrino mobile technology as well as for its processors, chips, and motherboard. Kim explained, "'Intel. Leap Ahead' is a simple expression that declares who we are and what we do. This is a part of our heritage. Our mission has always been to find and drive the next leap ahead to continuously challenge the status quo" (Intel Corporation, 2006, p. 1). At the same time as the leap to its new branding, Intel also decided to invest its future advertising revenues in online media. In 2006, it accounted for almost a third of its advertising expenditure. David Mitchell, Intel's head of interactive marketing, dedicated his time to developing Intel's interactive advertising strategy, as he realized that there was a disconnect between its offline and online advertising. The brand was rapidly shifting from TV and print ads to the Internet, as the latter provided a more personal experience and enabled audiences to better interact with the brand (Harwood, 2006).

Intel: Sponsors of Tomorrow (2009-2012) :

In 2009, Deborah Conrad, Intel vice president and general manager of the corporate marketing group, emphasized the need to convey that Intel was "not just a microprocessor company, but a 'move-societyforward-by-quantum-leaps' company" (Campaign India, 2009). In response, the "Sponsors of Tomorrow" campaign was created by Venables Bell & Partners in San Francisco in 2009. The campaign launched in the United States in May 2009, before rapidly expanding to two dozen countries and lasting for three years. Paul Venables, the agency's founder and co-creative director, realized that the perception of Intel was narrow and it was important for consumers to recognize Intel's thought leadership and how it was impacting the future in many exciting ways. The campaign included print, online, outdoor, and other advertisement placements that focused on helping consumers choose the best Intel processor to meet their needs (Campaign India, 2009). As part of this branding move, Otellini also wanted to turn the spotlight on Intel's employees who were responsible for its innovation and strong record of operational excellencethat is, the rock stars of its industry. To support this move, ads were launched, including one print ad featuring the line, "Your rock stars aren't like our rock stars." The advertisement depicted a two-picture visual featuring a rock band wearing sunglasses and jeans alongside two computer engineers sporting glasses and white lab coats reflective of the engineers who designed the first microprocessor in 1969 (Ads of the World, 2009). The rock star theme was also the basis of advertisements for television and online broadcasting. One of these advertisements featured Ajay Bhatt, the co-creator of USB, who was portrayed by an actor who enjoyed celebrity treatment by his colleagues as he walked across the company cafeteria.

Intel: Look Inside (2013-2015) :

In 2013, under the new leadership of CEO Brian Krzanich, Intel introduced a new tagline, "Look Inside," to better align with its well-known Intel Inside campaign (Estes, 2013). Intel launched its Look Inside campaign with an advertisement sharing the story of 16-year-old Jack Andraka, who had developed a new method for cancer detection and was the winner of the 2012 Intel Science and Engineering Fair Grand Prize (Ad Age, 2013). Intel's new brand platform, Look Inside, was developed to strengthen further the emotional connect with audiences. This move was supported by research that indicated its customers were more interested in the present than the future. The campaign, through a series of short films, encouraged people to look within themselves to find what made them special. (Elliot, 2013). The global, visually interactive tour called "Experience Intel. Look Inside" was designed to create excitement around Intel's new range of products such as Ultrabooks, tablets, all-in-ones, and smartphones, and to enable customers to experience its latest technologies in novel and engaging ways (Intel Corporation, 2013). In 2014, Steven Fund joined Intel as the CMO, reporting directly to CEO Krzanich. Fund's responsibilities included managing Intel's global marketing strategy, branding and advertising, partner and channel marketing, and digital and social media marketing, among others (Intel Corporation, 2014). Fund felt that Intel was struggling to connect its brand to the experiences its technology enabled outside microprocessors. He was determined to position the Intel brand beyond microprocessors and showcase its leadership in growing businesses such as cloud computing, where Intel clearly dominated the market. According to Fund, Intel processed about 98% of cloud computing data in the world (Kapko, 2017). In 2014, Intel established a high-profile and successful internal agency called Agency Inside, a play on its Intel Inside tagline, which employed about 90 staff (Walker, 2016). While it operated much like an external agency being responsible for the creative, content, and experiential marketing activation, Intel continued to work with outside advertising agencies as well.

Intel: Experience What's Inside (2016-2018) :

Under Fund, Intel focused on transitioning from a predominantly B2B brand to an innovative technology brand that consumers could admire and trust, and which would be effective in engaging millennials as consumers and business decision-makers through live events and brand ambassadors. The messaging revolved around connecting Intel's products and technologies to the experiences that millennials and consumers were passionate about in a wide array of sports and entertainment fields. Intel leveraged on star power by signing celebrities such as television star Jim Parsons and basketball star LeBron James as brand ambassadors to build brand resonance and affinity. In fact, both brand ambassadors who were initially used for consumer advertising were later migrated to enterprise advertising (Adams, 2018). This approach enabled Intel to build a more cohesive brand image and messaging across its B2B and B2C segments. Intel's experiential playbook also consisted of signing virtual reality (VR) deals in a number of sports leagues including the National Collegiate Athletic Association, National Basketball Association, National Football League, and Major League Baseball, marketing activation and sponsorship of high-profile events such as the Super Bowl, Grammy Awards, and the Olympic Games, where it deployed drones for aerial performances. Its drone-related videos enjoyed high engagement on social media such as Facebook and Twitter (Adams, 2018). In 2016, Intel launched a new campaign focusing on the theme "Amazing Experiences Outside." Intel changed its tagline to "Experience What's Inside" to build on the legacy of the Intel Inside branding, while showcasing its thought leadership and innovation in areas such as animation, video gaming, and robotics. The debut advertisement showed exciting visuals such as a dress with artificial butterflies flying around it and a prosthetic limb that enabled a man to walk (Takahashi, 2016). According to Penny Baldwin, the vice president and general manager of Intel's global brand management, the Amazing Experiences Outside campaign epitomized the company's strategy. It showcased Intel as a leading company providing the technologies and sponsorships that enhanced users' experience and engagement in gaming, sports, and entertainment (Takahashi, 2016). Focusing on experiences enabled Intel to move away from a PC-centric approach and more effectively target its broadening B2B and B2C segments, especially millennials. Building on this strategy, in 2017 Intel's experiential team worked with Groove Jones using VR technology to explain the future of 5G networks and how Intel was helping to drive the 5G network at the 2017 CeBIT Conference in Germany (Agency Spotter, 2017). With this shift, Intel aimed to emphasize how the brand had evolved beyond microprocessors to include "amazing human experiences" (Slefo, 2017). Despite having an enviable and dominant market share of 90% in the B2B server space in 2018, Intel recognized that its growth in the future would be driven not only by its products for PCs and servers, but also its data-centric businesses. Its brand recognition and leadership were weak and fragmented, especially in those businesses that it wanted to grow, such as AI, autonomous driving, and 5G (Gesenhues, 2018).

Intel's Brand in Transition: Staying Relevant and Connected:

In July 2018, Fund left Intel and a decision was made to shut down the company's Agency Inside inhouse operations (Schultz & Pasquarelli, 2018). Karen Walker was appointed CMO in 2019. An experienced technology marketer previously at Cisco, Walker announced that Intel was recalibrating its marketing strategy and shifting its focus from consumer-facing branding and placing more emphasis on B2B and ecosystem marketing (Williams, 2019). Walker felt that this move would enable Intel to leverage the diverse and creative talent, as well as the digital and social media capabilities, of external agencies to address the increasing complexity and interconnectedness of its data-centric businesses and reinforce its brand position on how its technologies and solutions enrich people's lives and experiences. Walker was however concerned that the stronger focus on B2B and ecosystem marketing could potentially dilute Intel's strong brand awareness and resonance with end users. Since 2016, Intel had leveraged its Amazing Experiences Outside campaigns to build strong brand leadership with both enterprise customers and PC end users by embracing a B2B2C marketing approach. It executed push-and-pull marketing strategies that targeted end users with brand advertising and experiential marketing activities as well as enterprise customers with cooperative trade advertising, supported by celebrity brand ambassadors, such as Parsons and James, who connected strongly with both B2C and B2B audiences. Intel's data-centric businesseswhich comprised the Data Center Group, Internet of Things Group, NonVolatile Memory Solutions Group, Programmable Solutions Group, Mobileye, and othersaccounted for about 48% of revenue in 2019 with a total addressable market (TAM) of USD 300 billion (Intel Corporation, 2019a). The PC-centric business driven by the Client Computing Group made processors and adjacent products such as memory and modems for commercial and gaming PCs and notebooks. While it accounted for 52% of Intel's total revenues, the PC-centric business was expected to remain flat or slightly down over the next few years (Intel Corporation, 2019a). By 2019, Intel was well positioned to capitalize on the strong trend in cloud computing which enabled large and small enterprises to access computing, storage, and networking resources on demand, either from their own data centers or from cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google (Metz, 2016). The move to the cloud enabled enterprises to reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO) and to be more productive and scalable by deploying a variety of cloud service models to deliver virtual, on-demand services such as Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), Function as a Service (FaaS), and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS; Intel Corporation, n.d.). However, as Intel diversified into new markets (Intel Corporation, 2015), the challenge remained for its brand to evolve and stay relevant and dominant, not only in PCs and servers, but also in the data-centric businesses that required it to showcase its innovation and technological leadership in cloud computing, AI, autonomous driving, and 5G, as well as drive user experiences in the rapidly growing gaming, sports, and entertainment markets. In September 2019, Intel built on its amazing human experiences branding when the company announced that it was partnering with the Olympics. Intel was to collaborate with the International Olympic Committee to utilize its core technologies to enhance the experiences for athletes, attendees, staff, and viewers for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. In addition to live VR broadcasting of the games, Intel's VR training system would be used to improve training effectiveness. The company, together with its technology partners, would also be creating more immersive Olympic experiences including NEC facial recognition, e-sports, and using AI to create the Games' theme song. The NEC facial recognition technology, which could identify over 300,000 people at the Games, will be used for reducing identification fraud and reduce waiting times at entry check points (Intel Corporation, 2019b). Intel also announced that it was to sponsor four American athletes to join "Team Intel" and serve as brand ambassadors, as well as provide feedback on how Intel's technology can support athletes and the sport ecosystem (Palmer, 2020). Intel also built on its social responsibility branding by integrating social purpose into its global marketing strategy. In this move, the company highlighted how its breakthrough technologies improved lives and solved global challenges, such as conservation and preservation of cultural legacy, climate change, safety in autonomous vehicles, diagnosis and treatments, energy optimization, and enabling smarter more sustainable cities (Intel Corporation, 2018-2019). In 2020, Intel Capital invested USD 250 million in Reliance's Jio Platforms to solve digital access problems and enable cost-effective digital transformation in emerging markets such as India, where it has maintained an important presence (Shead, 2020). Intel has also won several awards and recognition for its corporate social responsibility, and was ranked second in Corporate Responsibility Magazine's 100 Best Corporate Citizens in 2019 amongst the largest U.S. public companies (Lock, 2019).

The Way Forward:

Over the years, Intel has consistently spent as much money on marketing and branding as it has on research and development (R&D; see Table 2). Thanks to those efforts, the Intel Inside program was one of the world's largest cooperative marketing programs and a very successful example of ingredient branding (Intel Corporation, 2019a). By 2019, Intel had demonstrated its ability to invest and grow its data-centric businesses after making huge bets in AI, autonomous driving, and 5G, to deliver disruptive and immersive technological experiences for its enterprise customers and end users. Bob Swan, Intel's CEO, emphasized that its ambition was to play a larger role in its customers' success, and that Intel's technologies have made real impact globally. He highlighted that the "PC, the Internet, and the cloud were fully realized in part because of the power of our technology and the richness of our ecosystem" (Intel Corporation, 2019a, p. 2).

Due to the layout of the contents of this material, please use this link to access and/or download the accompanying table.

Source: Yahoo Finance. https://sg.finance.yahoo.com/quote/INTC/financials?p=INTC

With Intel's more diversified ambitions to dominate cloud computing, AI, VR, autonomous transportation, and 5G, Walker and her marketing team needed to identify branding initiatives and campaigns that would enable Intel to realize its data-centric brand vision. Could they build on the current branding campaign focusing on Amazing Experiences? Would it continue to resonate and strongly position Intel as a technological and market leader with its clients and its partner ecosystem? It remained to be seen whether the ingredient branding strategy that had made Intel a household brand would stay relevant in the era of cloud computing, 5G communications, and the Internet of Things. In assessing the way forward, Walker had to consider whether shifting the focus to B2B branding would dilute the B2B2C marketing strategies that had worked so well in the past.

Questions:-

Q#1). Given the facts of the case, describe the importance and benefits of ingredient branding to a component manufacturer like Intel.

Q#2). Describe the requirements for ingredient brand and state how successful Intel has been in its ingredient branding.

Q#3). Summarize the effectiveness of the "Amazing Experiences" campaign in repositioning Intel's brand to better communicate and deliver its diversified technologies and platforms.

Q#4). Describe the impact of the diversification on Intel's brand equity and suggest the best strategy to reach its millennials segment.

Answer template questions also:

DECISION CRITERIA

ANALYSIS

Identification of problems

Alternatives

decisions/ recommendations

Implementation