V/Speak

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

Charlene Li of the Altimeter Group and author of Groundswell, released a new report (great visual here) today that looks at the 100 most valuable brands and how engaged they are in the their social media efforts.  Intel, the company that pays my wage, is tied with Yahoo for #10.  I’m pretty proud of this as I know the social media practitioners within the walls of Intel have worked very hard to earn this recognition and ranking.  The best part – they are directly correlating engagement to financial performance.  Finally – validation that social media engagement, if done effectively and consistently, can lead to a positive ROI for the company that is exhibiting good business practice in this space.  Looking forward to helping raise that rank in 2009.

David Veneski Social Media Engagement, Intel

I’ve been at Intel since the late 90’s and during my time here, it’s pretty apparent that this company is focused on the ‘future‘ , with the mindset that Intel is a leader in technological innovation.  Intel strives to deliver solutions that make people’s lives more exciting and fulfilling – enabling positive change and a better, more interesting world.  Beyond the labs and the fabs, the media team also tries to have a little bit of fun in our advertising (as you can tell with our recent Rock Star ad in our Sponsors of Tomorrow campaign) and in some of the sponsorships we choose to put our media behind. 

Most recently, we’ve decided to work with Maggie Mason of Mighty Girl and help her out with a few things on her “Life List“.  You wouldn’t necessarily expect that Intel and Maggie would be a natural fit – however, her Life List personifies what ‘Tomorrow’ feels like for the everyday person.  Don’t get me wrong – Maggie is far from ordinary, but like the rest of us she has some aspirations of things she’d like to do as she moves through life.  We’re pretty excited to help her check a few of those things off and, based on the comments on her posts, her readers are too!

Kelly Says: “Intel suddenly ROCKS as a brand in my opinion”

ElJay Says: “Wow, wow, wow. That is incredible. Way to go Intel!”

Heather Says: “OMG – THRILLED for you! How FANTASTIC! And what an amazing thing for Intel to do…..particularly in this crazy time! I love your list and can’t wait to see how it all unfolds! Congrats!”

Keep track of Maggie’s progress (she’ll be tap dancing like Fred Astaire in no time!) on her list through her Blog and Twitter– we’ll be doing some fun things with her over the coming months.  I can’t reveal all of the list items we’re helping her with here – that wouldn’t be any fun and we want to surprise you with how Intel is helping Maggie whittle down that list of life to do’s…stay tuned – much more fun to come, tomorrow!

The idea for this came from Federated Media, which works with many bloggers around the world.  They’ve been working with my team for several years, and their creativity and good relationships are helping bring to life the “Sponsors of Tomorrow” theme we’ve been building since March.

David Veneski Advertising #lifelist, #tomorrow, Intel, Mighty Girl

It’s no secret that I am a Pandora fan.  Not only do I like their product, but I genuinely enjoy the people that bring great opportunities to Intel to help extend our campaign messages.  We’ve been trying to get the right thing in place to leverage the power of the Pandora listening network for our Sponsors of Tomorrow brand campaign since launch.  Yesterday we finally unveiled our effort.  Big kudos to the Pandora team and our agency for really working hard to make this happen – I think it will be a great activation around our new brand campaign. 

We did a soft launch yesterday and you’ll see us show up more and more over the next month or so as you enjoy your favorite artist streaming on Pandora.com.  The visual experience you can expect is in the image below.  We’ll also have some interstitial placements of our Rock Star and Oops advertisements as media within the channel stream.  Great job Team Pandora!

David Veneski Intel, Pandora #tomorrow, Intel, Pandora

I travel for my job – lucky for me, I get to go to interesting places.  Whether I am flying to New York to participate in a social media summit, heading down to North Carolina to meet with a customer or spending time in the Windy City with my agency,  I am constantly taxing the limits of the technology I use for my job.  Smart phone – check, laptop – check, data card – check, iPod – double check (well, this isn’t really job related but a guy can’t work ALL the time now…).  The 3 things that I worry about most, in this order are: battery life, connectivity, and form factor (including weight).  If I don’t have good battery life, my ship has sailed – I’m not getting any work done on those long flights across country. 

Clearly, working for Intel gives me some perspective on this matter as we focus on battery life as one of the key differentiators in our processor line.  We’ve recently announced a new family of processors that will power the next generation of ultra-thin notebooks.  Now, rather than focusing on turning your screen brightness down, disabling your wireless antenna while not connected, and frantically searching for a power outlet during layovers to get enough juice for the next segment, customers can be confident that they are choosing a notebook that will help ensure they enjoy their computing experience for longer periods than ever before. 

Now, which notebook to choose?  The customer that I met with this week was Lenovo.   Last year they released the first instantiation of their ultra-thin lineup in the X300 – a competative PC answer to Apple’s Mac Book Air.  This year’s addition to the lineup is the T400s.  Gizmodo does a comprehensive review of the notebook and from talking with the good people in Cary, NC (US Headquarters for Lenovo) they are pretty confident that this will be a best seller in their family of products. 

Standard on this machine is an Intel Core 2 Duo processor (as an Intel employee and share holder, I think you for that).  In addition, there is the option of embedded WiMAX for connectivity in the cities (currently Baltimore, Portland, and as of June – Atlanta) that are on the Clear WiMAX network.  As a data card user while traveling and a modest user of WiMAX in my home town of Portland, having embedded WiMAX capabilities is a bonus.  Now the trick is expanding that network beyond the handful of cities.  In addition, this is a notebook that has definitely undergone a serious design stress test.  Lenovo did a great job in analyzing how their machines are used by the clientele they cater to and realized that design definitely matters.  Choosing not to stray from their signature matte black shell, they instead focused on things like ‘supersizing’ keys users touch more often (ESC and Delete), better integrated tools for Voice over IP calls, and an optional solid state drive for data security.  All good decisions in my book.

I’d like to get my hands on a T400s to try out for a while – it has to be an upgrade to my nearly 4 year old X60s which, while tiny, definitely forces me to sacrifice some things – like battery life and an optical drive.  Yes – I’m that guy you saw searching for the power outlet in RDU and PHX last night so I could kick out the emails I did on the plane during my flight home.  With an ultra-thin notebook powered by our new processor line, I imagine that my 6 hours of flying time would be productively spent without a care in the world about battery life.

David Veneski Intel, Ultra-thin #ultrathin, #wimax, Intel, Lenovo

As a follow on to our Sponsors of Tomorrow effort, we (Intel) are clearing up the confusion around our processor brands.  This week we announced our new brand structure and refined our strategy around a new, focused, ‘hero’ client brand – Intel® Core™.  There will be three levels of Core ‘modifiers’ that differentiate the various features and benefits native to each level of Core.  Joining the current instantiation, Core i7, will be an entry-level (Core i3) and a mid-level (Core i5) modifier to round out the Intel Core family.  Our VP of and Director of Corporate Marketing, Deborah Conrad, explains this transition to Core as our hero client brand in a video posted to intel.com.

David Veneski Intel #tomorrow, Brand, Core, Intel

The consumer wanting a mobile computing device has several options before them – at multiple price points and feature sets.  Depending on their usage model, the device they choose may vary.  If they are interested in a small form-factor device that they can easily carry with them to simply connect to the internet and surf the web, a netbook may be the best choice.  For more compute intensive activities, a CULV (consumer ultra low voltage) machine could provide a mid-range price point option for consumers that don’t need the full features of a high end notebook or laptop. 

As an employee of Intel and an avid user of mobile computing technology, I think the choices available are outstanding.  As a shareholder, how do I feel about the potential cannibalization of higher ASP SKUs by lower price point devices?  Again – I think choice is good.  People will purchase the proper device for their needs.  Sometimes that will mean that they are the proud owner of a top end notebook for their high octane computing needs, and will also purchase a ‘companion’ device such as an Atom-based netbook to take with them to satisfy their portable web surfing jones.  CULV based machines are set to debut in June and provide an “…opportunity for upsell” as Sean Maloney stated at our investor meeting earlier this month.  He continued on to state “We can reach new price points and we can also get paid for it.”

The way I interpret this: identify the market/customer needs, provide a choice of solutions to satisfy those needs, evolve your product line to improve upon past generation offerings, and finally continue to innovate to ensure you’re exceeding your customer’s and the industry’s expectations.

David Veneski Intel Atom, CULV, Intel, Netbook

It’s launch day in the U.S. for our new advertising campaign.  You all got a sneak peek last week, but today we pull the curtain back and show you all of the great executions we’ve put in place to support our efforts.  Credit to a crack team @ OMD for helping us build a spectacular media plan, including targeting several ‘first mover opportunities’ that will help you get to know our ‘Rockstars‘. 

Never before has the New York Times allowed a complete overlay of their homepage.  We did that today with the image you see to the left of this post.  In addition a contingent of engineering, marketing, and sales folks were on hand at the opening of the NASDAQ this morning to kick off the new week in the market.  Rather than ringing the bell to initiate the opening of the market, our group harmonized the Intel ‘bong‘ to commence trading – a first ever for the NASDAQ.  To complete the New York experience, we’ve given you the opportunity to share your vision of ‘Tomorrow’ to the world by sending (click on ‘You on Tomorrow @ the bottom of the page) your thoughts to the NASDAQ and Reuters boards in Times Square.  If you’re not in the Big Apple today, please check out the dualing Times Square webcams.

The Sponsors of Tomorrow campaign is scheduled to be the cornerstone of our advertising for the foreseeable future.  We’ll be broadcasting our Rockstar and Oops spots on the major networks and across cable starting this week.  We’re hoping you’ll have as much fun with this campaign as we plan to.

David Veneski Advertising, Intel #tomorrow, Intel, Sponsors of Tomorrow

From BrandRepublic:

“Revolution teamed up with i-level’s social media agency Jam to reveal the 100 most mentioned brands on Twitter and how they are aiming to capitalise on the buzz”

There are quite a number of technology companies ahead of @intel.  I wonder if they are aggregating all of our Twitter mojo?  Collectively our social media teams here at Intel will work hard to earn a steadily rising rank on Twitter.  Intel – Sponsors of Tomorrow.

David Veneski Intel, Social Media #tomorrow, Intel, Twitter

Today we (Intel – the company that supports my social media habit) did a ‘pre-release‘ of sorts for our new Sponsors of Tomorrow Advertising Campaign, officially launching on May 11th.  It’s the first advertising campaign that focus on our brand vs. a product or product line.  The first news hit at the end of the day in the New York Times, and has quickly taken off on the social web as the print and video advertisements get distributed digitally through multiple channels.  As an Intel employee – I’m excited by the technology we are building and am looking forward to being a part of the innovations of the future.  Here’s a sneak peek at our upcoming TV spot.

David Veneski Advertising, Intel #tomorrow, Intel, Sponsors of Tomorrow