One of the really great things about working at Intel is the fact that I get to work on some amazing programs. As a GIGANTIC sports fan and an ardent user of great technology, I have been spoiled this year. Not only are we announcing and launching a new family of Intel Core processors, we are doing so around major events in the first half of the year. First, there was the Super Bowl. Next was last Sunday’s first ever foray in the Academy Awards. Starting this Sunday, we are unveiling a major relationship with CBS and their coverage of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tourney – aka, March Madness. Don’t let me tell the tale, rather read what Stuart Elliott’s (New York Times Advertising columnist) take in today’s Media Decoder blog. We’re very happy with this coverage – Mr. Elliott did a nice job capturing the essence of a very complicated integrated media effort. I’ll be watching the whole tourney – from Selection Sunday, to the Play-In game, the National Championship game on April 5th in Indianapolis.
If you’re in media or digital marketing, you know that the hottest platform of 2010 is the mobile device. From a direct advertising and marketing approach, what better way to interact with your customer – on a device that is always with them and almost always ‘on’. We are just beginning to roll out a very robust mobile strategy here @ Intel and one of the first programs happens to be a fun way to send a message to your friends and family – from your mobile device – specifically, the iPhone.
Intel is giving iPhone users the opportunity to bring postcards back from the days of gift shops and stamps with a digital twist. “Postcards From The Future” allows iPhone users to send fun and interactive digital postcards to their friends near and far via social media sites like Facebook and Twitter or by email. We’ve had a very successful first few days on the iTunes App Store – ranking in the top 50 of free applications and in the top 15 of free entertainment specific apps. If you’re an iPhone user – give it a try – we’d love your feedback!
We’ve been out of the mix in terms of being an advertiser in the Super Bowl for more than a decade (12 years to be precise). This past Sunday, we changed that in a big way – debuting two new ads (Lunch Room and Generations) during the game and again in the post-game show (which we were also the primary sponsor of). Not only did we have an exciting game to watch, but as an Intel employee it gave me a great sense of pride to see our name on such a grand sporting stage. The team that I work with did a great job of pulling all of this together – we’ve all been working very hard to make this happen and to see it come off without a hitch was fantastic. If you haven’t seen our newest spot, featuring Jeffrey the Robot, I’ve embedded it below. We also spent a great deal of time promoting through the social graph, as ComputerWorld notes in an article released Monday.
I am a big fan of media partners that go the extra mile to make an experience good for the client. We recently did a pretty cool execution with Digg around our new product announcement at CES. We worked with Chas Edwards and the Digg team to create ‘content’ ads and ‘digg’ ads that offered up a great value to the customer – aggregation of the best stories coming out of CES, in multiple places our target audience consumes content. Yep – that’s right – we aren’t forcing them to come to Intel.com, rather, we’ll bring that content directly to them…wherever they are by offering a teaser link that drives them to a content hub on Digg (see below, credit ChasNote). As I’ve stated before, driving people to Intel.com is not my first priority. Bringing them great content (from Intel) in their natural browsing path, is. We’ve done that in our program with Digg.
ESPN has a long list of ‘This is SportsCenter’ commercials – some are better than others, all are pretty funny…. In light of tonight’s Civil War (for the 2009 RoseBowl berth) between my Alma Mater (Oregon) and our rival (Oregon State) I’m posting my favorite ‘This is SportsCenter’ – Duck Style!
GigaOm released an interesting article about 6 weeks back regarding the most important metrics to track in Mobile Advertising efforts. Considering that Gartner has forecasted that Mobile Advertising will grow a staggering 74% in 2009 – measurement of that activity is paramount. The industry is moving away from CPC and CPM as the standard measure of media effectiveness - while they are still somewhat relevant, it doesn’t accurately represent how ‘engaged’ a user is on the mobile platform. The important metrics are:
Reach
Targeting
Engagement
Viral
Transactions
For the full explanation on why those are the metrics to focus on, I encourage you to read the full article. What struck me as a key statement was the following quote:
“We don’t want to just capture the “moment of first sight” but the “duration of sight” and how the user interacts within that duration with both the individual ad and the overall campaign. In order to differentiate and be effective, mobile has to measure and report on how users are engaging with the campaign, from first impression to the last so-called “moment of sight.” It should take into account the time spent during the visit as well as the actions and reactions.“
From my perspective this holds true not just for mobile, but for every advertising effort in your media mix.
Our commercials keep poking fun at the smart people at Intel… This one is pretty good. It’s scary to think that some of our engineers would actually notice that change right away…
While not being a die hard fan of the Conan O’Brien show, I did make it a point to watch the clip from last week’s episode where he interviewed one of our Rockstars…Ajay Bhatt, Co-Founder of the USB. The diametrically opposed personalities made for a funny sketch and quite a bit of visibility for our brand in an area we don’t normally have the opportunity to be recognized. We’ve done a few things with Conan over the years, thanks to our crack ConsumerCampaign team here at Intel. Kudos to Ajay for being a good sport….and for buying the drinks!
This is a great graphic that I have to give credit to BBDO’s Barcelona blog for exposing me to. I’d say that advertising has gotten just a ‘bit’ more pervasive in our everyday lives….
Traveling today and came across this funny Vaio commercial while en route to Los Angeles. Social Media Addicts Association – classic, and frighteningly appropriate to our ‘culture’ today.
