...er correction...I suddenly feel like BURNING a Core 2 Duo.This goes out to the marketing folks at Intel: Perhaps it's time to re-evalutate your ad agency. I would fire them.
This ad sucks. I suddenly feel like throwing my Core 2 Duo out the window. Just what exactly are they trying to say here?
17 blogger comments:
Intel's mea culpa from a VP and Director of Integrated Marketing:
http://blogs.intel.com/views/2007/07/sprinter_ad.html
Wow. WOW!
How many people can a single ad offend?
Looks like a circular firing squad to me. Starting gun goes off and they ram into each other and the guy in middle. Brillant.
This may be a long shot, but perhaps they are intentionally trying to offend people, to get people to talk about the ad. I wouldn't have seen the ad unless Rahul blogged about it, mission accomplished Intel.
You can read this all sorts of ways. Black guys bowing before a white man, white man is the employer and black men are the employees..."You're all my bitches".
Or you can choose not to make sense of it, like they're running headfirst into each other. It doesn't matter.
Anyways, if you find a reason to be offended you WILL be offended. I've always been turned off by the hooker/trashy woman/wife/mistress/whatever imagery that Voodoo has used in some of their marketing materials before. It made Voodoo look pathetic as if it had to resort to beer-commercial standards. In my eyes anyways.
But I'm smart enough to be able to separate marketing bullshit from actual products. If you're unable to do that, you're ... you're ....
...I've tried to think of the most appropriate term but the only thing that comes to mind is "simple-minded". You're going to go through life being offended and peeved and perhaps missing out on a lot of good things.
But I guess a multibillion dollar company like Intel should at least have the foresight to see how this could be offensive if misconstrued. I'm sure they're messed up far worse before!
Intel wanted to highlight its front-side bus advantages! Turn on just one core, and you'll be ok,
but turn them all on and you'll end up with all kinds of contentions. ;)
For anyone who has run track, the sprinter's crouch is obvious. The hand position, head position is a dead giveaway.
My beef with many tech ads is they show a pasty white GEEK surrounded by either HOT women, machinery like custom cars, or some other imagery intended to evoke sexual/athletic prowess.
The ubiquitous GEEK is the only part of this ad that is even slightly offensive.
Moreso, we need to view this ad on a Continuum as ads are bought in a series generally. This is another take on the MULTIPLY campaign, I bet. You know, the multiple shots of cool people doing things with CE/computer-based devices? Based on Intel using thematic elements of its multiply campaign with the pasty guy glued the middle, this ad is the logical outcome of pretty much all IT ad campaigns in modern history.
That a confluence of thematic elements combined to form a picture that people (unassociated with tech advertising in general and the multiply campaign in specific) found offensive truly shows their ignorance and a detachment from consumer culture.
I've noticed in the multiply ads, they feature people of all races and both men and women. They are intentionally being INCLUSIVE. Try putting this ad on a wall with all the others and I find no objectionable imagery whatsoever. Viewed by itself in a vacuum, I would agree with many others that it does show some level of insensitivity.
wow Rahul your "outrage" is laughable..
Come on .. the ad, though insensitive is probably not intentionally racist. No need to start a witch hunt for this one. Someone somewhere has learnt a lesson.
Rahul, I agree with you. Right after introducing the Core 2 Duo processor, Intel has been exaggerating with the amount of advertisements that they have been putting in magazines and newspapers.
Rahul,
Your blog used to be so much better. It has become irrelevant ramblings on bicycling, HP corporate propoganda and business 101 material. I used to come frequently, sometimes multiple times per day. I enjoyed reading the insights into your particular industry niche. You don't post like that anymore - and I think that any regular readers you may have had have all vanished.
Your latest post is the perfect example of what has gone wrong with your blog. It provides no insight and it smacks of band-wagoneering and plain old news regurgitation. You could have talked about the advertising process, how corporate marketing works and anything you would do to make it better. You could have used Intel as an example of the process gone wrong, in a constructive way, and then discussed detail. But you didn't. If you have nothing to add to a conversation - don't bother. All you are doing is making Google's disks spin.
For the record, I want to keep reading your blog and I am not trying to be a jerk. I felt compelled to comment because I would like to see your blog return to its glory days.
Hi Colin, I really appreciate your comments. The fact is, I don't have all the time in the world to blog -- especially this month. You'll know why next month.
That said, I actually whipped this one up on the plane after viewing the ad in PC Gamer and I wasn't actually re-writing anything I saw on the net.. This ad sucks, plain and simple -- I didnt want to spend too much time on it!
I would also like to point out that there are many industry related articles on the blog that I continue to write, and I will continue to do so for the same magazines that I currently write for. That said, I do understand your point, and will continue to do my best to deliver the information as I see it!
Perhaps Intel chose to use black people there because, well, they simply are much better runners than white people, at least on average.
Though if looked at that way one might say "hey, why are there only black people, white people can run too, you know!". As one said before me, if you really want you can see racism in pretty much anything.
Hmmm,
I thought for a second this was Sharikou's blog!
Rahul, You are smarter than that, so I thought. You know a company like Intel does not want to offend anybody. When I saw the add, I related it to their multiply campaign of the best there is just like how African American athletes dominate sports..
This article sounds more like a fanboism than an actual intellectual analyis such as those we used to read on this blog.
As well as being offensive, this ad looks really boring, can't they do what the graphics card companies do and have something like a fast car or an amazing anime character with lots of detail? That would lead people to believe that the components could help making something that looks like that in games.
i agree with rahul ..... this ad is not really good even i understand what they try to say ... and the colour combination is foolish ... is hard to see the sportmen due to the background colour .those intel inside ad is better i believe.
i prefer AMD's "break free" ad ....it is good to me .i remember they show how their CPU can help imporve them in testing , aerodyamic simulation , design and help them to win their race .
Bow down to Intel or else?
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