I feel great about what my job allows me to do and experience most days. Today I am especially proud to work at Intel. Our team launched a program that will really make an impact via social change. The program is on Facebook and is called ‘Vote for a Cause‘. Our Fan Page officially launched today and is being promoted throughout Facebook’s media network.
The short description is that we have created an application (launching August 15th) that will allow every member of the Facebook community to nominate and vote for their favorite ’cause’. The cause with the most votes at the end of September will receive up to $50k (USD) in co-branded (w/Intel) media on Facebook evangelizing and promoting their cause. How cool is that?
We have very active philanthropic efforts here surrounding Corporate and Social Responsibility, but this effort is quite different than our corporate giving programs. It’s not Intel choosing the way the advertising money is spent – it’s you, the community on Facebook, that will determine which cause is most deserving of the promotional dollars supporting their efforts. I’m confident that the community will make a great choice in determining the final winner and the recipient of the co-branded advertising dollars. In addition, I’m confident that cause will be very grateful for the extended exposure they will be getting as a result of the investment in their effort by Intel. This will be one to watch – be sure to join our Fan Page and, starting August 15th – nominate and vote for your favorite cause. The power of social media in affecting social change – made possible by Intel.
David Veneski Social Media Cause Marketing, Social Media, Social Responsibility
I’m usually pretty in tune with the news about the company I work for, but this one must have slipped by me in the last few months. At the end of April Millward Brown released their report on the top 100 most valuable global brands. Intel comes in at #23 (up from #27 last year) at a value of nearly $23 billion with a modest gain in value of 4%. Not bad in these economic times, but we are still behind several other technology companies (Google, Microsoft, and Apple to name a few) in terms of both rank and % gain in value. What was very surprising to me is that Blackberry made a massive move over the last year – gaining an astounding 100% in value to be the largest mover in the tech sector. Blackberry is on a roll, having jumped 390% in 2008. Pretty impressive. Looking forward to the 2010 results to see how we respond.
David Veneski Branding, Intel Brand Value, Intel
This is a hot topic on Twitter today…breaking down the age group demographic of the most active participants on the micro-blogging service. Nielsen released their findings last week on their site and you can see from the chart below that the age range most likely to be using Twitter is the 24-54 year old demo. What’s interesting (and I mention this same data several months ago) is that the 55+ demo outpaces the % of Teen users as well. Does Twitter have a solution to reach what most companies consider their most valuable age audience? Time will tell – but so far, the answer is no.
David Veneski Twitter Teen, Twitter
Working at a very recognizable high tech company for the last 10 years (and a smaller, yet equally recognizable one for the 5 years prior) has taught me a lot about what companies think about when they proclaim ‘Leadership’ in their space. At Intel, on the back of our employee badges, we have our ‘Values’. Those values revolve around Customer Orientation, Discipline, and Quality – to name a few. One sub-bullet under the value of Quality stands out to me and it says “Do the right things right”. I think that’s a great line and is applicable to so many aspects of the business. I peek at our values from time to time – mostly when I am writing my self assessment around review periods or mapping a project justification document to the core tenants upon which our company was built. Today I was compelled to review them again after reading a guest post on Fast Company by Paul Worthington. He made a great observation about the power of the customer and the responsibility of brands to lead in their space.
He negates (well, at least cautions against) a popular and rampant belief that, with the power of Social Media and direct feedback, the customer is absolutely in charge and brands must simply accept that as fact. I appreciated how he urged brands to take control of their own fate and do more. Not just with their customers, but also in how they square off with their challengers. He summarizes his observation of what makes brands leaders in their space in three lines:
- Innovate by leading your customer
- Create amazing experiences
- Get involved with the conversation
Three very simple tenants that every brand leader must heed. #3, in my opinion, is probably the most important and could be the potential foundation for the other two to build off of. It all starts with understanding what your customer is expecting from your brand. By listening to, and incorporating their input into, your traditional product development cycle a brand will be better equipped to ‘create an amazing experience’ for current and future customers. Some brands ‘get’ this far more intuitively than other brands. At Intel, we are getting better with #3 and it makes me proud of the team that is helping move that discipline forward.
Hat tip to Paul Worthington for a well thought out post.
David Veneski Branding, Intel, Social Media Brand, Leader
When I think of Google, I envision everything they do centering around an online presence – including the way they promote their goods and services. Very rarely do I look for an advertisement promoting Google’s wares in an offline environment – not in a magazine, newspaper, or TV – and certainly not on a billboard?!! Well – that all changed recently… Yes – Google has gone traditional in promoting their new Enterprise web-based suite of messaging and collaboration applications. Interesting approach, and not the first time they have gone offline to attract users to their cloud applications, as reported by BrandWeek today. Here’s the curious thing – if you take a good hard look at how the message is displayed on a the billboard, there are less than 140 characters AND a short url. Coincedence or foreshadowing of a future ‘Google App’?
David Veneski Advertising, Traditional Media Billboard, Google