Joe Pulizzi talks to Pam Didner, Global Integrated Marketing Manager for Intel, about secret agent action flicks and Intel’s hip new social platform, The Museum of Me.
Joe Pulizzi: The “Intel Inside” campaign from the 1990s transformed Intel from a brand only engineers and technologists recognized to a household name. At the time, it was a completely new and transformative way of positioning a computer component. Do you see content as another transformative change in marketing for Intel?
Pam Didner: Yes. Understanding our customers’ pain points and creating relevant and compelling content to address that are a mandated strategic direction. Content marketing is everything we do on the B2B front. On the consumer front, we call it experience marketing. Experience marketing is about putting customers in the center and telling a story to which customers can connect emotionally. It’s no longer about speed and performance or product features, it’s really about what our products’ features can do to improve our customers’ lives.
J: I was dazzled by Intel’s video, The Chase—a two-minute short that has generated 2.5 million views over the last six months. I’m sure there are people who would watch that and think, “I don’t get it. How is this different from a commercial?”
P: Unlike a commercial, which interrupts other content, our videos are the attraction. The theme for our second generation core processor is “Visibly Smart Performance for Your Visual Life.” More than ever, we define who we are through visual experiences. A second-generation Intel® Core™ processor, with its combination of smart performance and stunning visuals, is the perfect engine for expressing and sharing your visual life. The Chase video is a short action flick combining cinema-like scenes and montages of computer applications to highlight how our lives seamlessly blend virtual and real. We were able to seamlessly embed key product benefits in the context of telling a story of two men chasing an agent.
As an extension of The Chase, our Asia-Pacific marketing team just launched The Escape, a YouTube thriller that lets our audience take part in the adventure. The Escape integrates YouTube, interactivity and social networking to make you the hero. It is more engaging than a commercial in that you get to solve puzzles, pilot drones and brawl with assailants to assist the film’s femme fatale in her mission. The video is part of a campaign designed to engage consumers and demonstrate the “Visibly Smart” capabilities of the second-generation Intel Core processors. It dramatizes product features including smart multi-tasking, turbo boost and wireless display.
J: Tell me about some other cool stuff Intel is working on in content marketing and social media?
P: Check out The Museum of Me. It was created by our Asia-Pacific marketing team and Projector, a boutique agency in Japan. The platform uses the information from your Facebook photos, friends and video to create a museum of you—as in a museum or art gallery. The project was beautifully imagined and executed. The group ran a test pilot on May 31. Within five minutes, there were 36 “likes.” The first tweet came from Madrid. Within five days from launch on June 1, we had 1 million hits. It caught everyone by surprise. It’s a matter of taking what people care dearly about and finding a way to tell a personalized story for them.
J: What new-fangled marketing concepts or tools excite you? What are the things you are intellectually wrestling with and trying to make sense of for Intel?
P: The first one that comes to my mind is customized TV commercials. A couple firms are exploring the delivery of customized commercials based on viewers’ psychographic and behavior differences. This will have a certain impact on the client slide. Does that mean that we have to further segment our audiences? Does it mean that we have to create multiple versions of TV commercials tailored for different audiences?
The other interesting concept I like to think about is the integration of 3-D into social media. Imagine 3-D Facebook or 3-D Twitter. How would that change the delivery of content in the future? It might make us think more like filmmakers than writers. I was reading the June edition of Fast Company, which listed the 100 most creative people in business. CNN’s David Bohrman is thinking about rendering reporters live in front of the anchor to enable one-to-one conversations from locales all over the world. Holograms are nothing new in the sci-fi and fantasy worlds. Why not elsewhere? Everything about 3-D is at its infancy stage. We still have a long way to go, but it will be an exciting journey.
Intel is an amazing brand. Our hero product, the microprocessor, presents us with a marketing challenge because our consumers cannot see it, smell it or touch it. We need to continue to find innovative ways to build brand relevance with consumers.
PAM DIDNER, selected as one of BtoB’s Top Digital Marketers in 2011, is the global integrated marketing manager for Intel. Didner is an expert in creating successful global marketing plans that meet local marketing’s needs. At Intel, Pam develops and manages Intel’s worldwide Enterprise and Small Business Strategies. She has led Intel’s enterprise product launches and worldwide marketing campaigns, and she has managed Intel’s main proprietary event, Intel Developer Forum, across nine countries.
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