“The world’s biggest chipmaker said on Thursday it will scrap its 37-year-old logo and well-known tagline as part of a major rebranding that will emphasize its shift away from its core PC business and into consumer products. The original Intel logo featuring a lowered ‘e’ will be replaced with one showing an oval swirl surrounding the company’s name.” Here is an interview with Paul Otellini, Intel’s CEO.
Given their track record the past five years, shouldn’t the new motto be “Plod along”?
From a marketing standpoint, rebranding most always is a indicator of desparation or just some new kid in marketing fresh out of college who hasn’t learned how the business world REALLY works yet.
From a marketing standpoint, rebranding most always is a indicator of desparation or just some new kid in marketing fresh out of college who hasn’t learned how the business world REALLY works yet.
Don’t talk nonsense. Brand refreshment is very important because not only does it attract free publicitity, it may also introduce your brand to a whole new group of people you did not address before.
A company cannot feed off of the same marketing strategy for too long. Changing it doesn’t automatically mean that your company is in bad weather; it can also mean that your company is entering new waters, or is simply having a shift in thinking in general.
Yeah? Just changing the logo opens entire new markets. Hopefully intel doesn’t place too much emphasis on this, people aren’t picking cpus like cans of soup or soda down at the market store, “I’m attracted to the cpu in the red can more than the blue can”. What this really means is some graphic artists kid may get to go to college after all.
ust changing the logo opens entire new markets.
Did you even bother to read the article? “…as part of a major rebranding that will emphasize its shift away from its core PC business and into consumer products.”
It’s not just a logo change. It’s an entire rebranding.
I read the article, met the guy they’re interviewing, not a fan so I skipped it. Renaming of chips is silly. Would you push the cheap coffee maker/alarm clocks aside to get the one with the intel/MSFT sticker? The home market will be dominated as it is now by bundles, hardware will be married to the service and all will be married to MSFT with their usual gorilla, (and I don’t mean guerilla), marketing tactics. Intel will sell to them, they will sell to you. Rather a bleak picture that.
When you’re bereft of sensible ideas to move the company forward let some marketing “whiz” “rebrand” your organisation. We’ve all seen this type of upper management desperation time and time again. The customers will appear if Intel manage to produce competitive _products_ irrespective of this rebranding stunt.
That just gave me an idea. Maybe Intel should adopt the Lexus, Toyota | Infinity, Nissan | Audi : VW, [automobile industry] approach and just come up with a myriad of logos and start separate marketing campaigns for their proessors! Hey, everyone is complaining that clock speed is being downplayed and the latest techniques to label processors are insanely unintuitive and confusing. I can see it now, folks with chrome “Lextel” logo’s on their dual-core state-of-the-art chip, while those lower on the foodchain are sporting plastic “Chevytel logos on their cases – with doors that don’t quite close right.
In all seriousness, there is a point here. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
exactly, every company needs a refresh here and there.
I think the best example is professional sports teams. They often get in slumps and fad away. Then they go, build a new stadium, new logo give the team a fresh look and most of the time it works well. (Tampa Bay Bucs, New England Patriots etc)
Greed and free agency has ruined sports. There is no sense of team loyalty. They just tore down a beautiful stadium here in St. Louis and cried with each bash of the ball. And for what reason? So they could join the “me to” in having more and more and more. The sentimental value couldn’t hold up to the desire for more. It’s pathetic and sad.
Year to year, the teams change faces, prices increase and viewership decreases. Its out of control, has been. You hit on a nerve with me.
Thom, babe, no use trying to explain to the Johnny Geeks here, most are the type who, if you hired them, would lock down in the basement of a company and occasionally give them some food and water to keep them occupied.
Its a basic rebranding based around the lanch of a completely new archicture and direction stratergy in regards to the focus of development and market focus – but hey, like I said, guys here will always look for some grand conspiracy theory, claiming that as arm chair CEO”s, they’ve got the brains.
Its about remaking the whole company around a whole new product line up, thats no different to the move Microsoft is making with Windows Vista or Apple with their product line up etc. Its about refocusing and relaunching the whole product line up.
I can assure you that Fortune 500 companies do not have “some new kid in marketing fresh out of college who hasn’t learned how the business world REALLY works yet” making company wide branding decisions. In this economy, your brand is one of your most important assets. Why do you think the copyright limits keep getting extended? Although not a trademark, the copyrighted character Mickey Mouse is so closely incorporated into Disney’s brand that it would injure its ability to market itself and make the company less recognizable. I’m not supporting copyright extensions, but you understand the illustration. Brand changes are a big deal. It would be like you changing your complete legal name.
The real question is whether or not you believe anything you just said?
Now what exactly is that supposed to mean? That stuff is marketing 101.
Brand recogntion is an important component of product marketing. There’s a lot of science behind it. When a company achieves franchise recognition, the last thing they want to do is “change” the typeface, layout or structure of what the public can recognize and identify with.
I believe you have a valid point although you go overboard with your “kid out of college” remark. Intel is losing its computing pop culture to AMD and is making a rather desperate and risky move by messing with its ID. It may bring attention to itself with this change, but it can only be considered a forced change rather than a desired change. The pressure is on. 2006 is going to be fun.
So why did you change your logo?
Its quite simple. AMD is beating us badly.. everytime we negotiate with our OEM partners, they mention becoming AMD exclusive and its impacting our bottom line.
So it was decided we were no longer a leader in the industry, and as a result, out of respect for the founders of Intel, we decided to change the logo so the old one stays *relatively* untainted and represents a time when Intel didn’t suck.
Now this is bad. Intel used to be a great company and I did work for it at one point. Now that Itanium is sunk and progress has been slowed, they reveal this new logo?
No wonder AMD is beating Intel’s butt. They need to get their act together and get with the program.
The Intel I knew is gone. Now it’s just a pale comparison to what was a great empire.
First ford, and now intel. And we know what ford stands for. How appropriate for intel.
What are you, 7 years old? This has nothing to do with Ford or any silly acronyms that were made up about it in grade school.
I think Intel changed Brand Image just for Apple.
So when the Intel Apple products ship next year, old time Apple users and even new Apple users won’t feel like they are getting a garden variety PC.
This new branding will have bigger mass appeal.
Or maybe they feel like they can justify the rebranding because they’ve partnered up with Apple. Intel has been making cool prototype machines for a while, but no one will actually make them (or anything else especially cool). They just keep making beige boxes, even if the beige boxes are now black with neon lights inside.
But now they have Apple, and people think that Apple is going places. So instead of just sitting around inside, Intel wants to be leaping around with Apple, or something like that.
Not that it’s anything meaningful, but it does seem to be an awful coincidence that the rebranding comes at the same time as the new Intel Macs.
You Mac guys have huge ego’s! What’s Apple’s market again? So Intel is catering to the old timers huh? Hey man, where do I get those funny colored things you are taking!? J/K!
So sorry, RGCook. But I am not a Mac guy with a huge ego. I am a happy PC user. When I said they did it for Apple, it was just a theory. No need quick judgments.
I was just kidding you a little. Apology not needed. I think you have a point actually – even if you are a PC only user! 😉
You guys are pathetic getting your panties in a twist simply over a new logo. I like the new design and look forward to seeing what new CPUs they bring to the table this year. Should be a great year especially for notebook PCs and well performing efficient computing.
-Grandmaster Flash
They probably want to show the world that there is at least some innovation going on @ intel.
Edited 2005-12-30 15:46
It doesn’t look all that different; most people probably won’t even notice. I will miss the lowered “e” though. Remember this: http://computermuseum.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/dev/intellec8/int…
Now if they could only get rid of the Intel ding dong thingymabobber every time somebody mentions Intel in an ad.
I think they could have come up with something better than That. It reminds me to Much of that Damm Intel Inside Logo.
Leap Ahead, who AMD in about 20 yrs.
So sayeth the AMD fanboy.
I find the new logo interesting, and understand their reasoning for doing it. What I don’t get is calling their new chip ‘Core’ and getting away with it. Because, you know, they will trademark it. And then maybe sue others that advertise ‘single-core’ or ‘dual-core’ chips as infringing on their trademark. Hopefully not, but who knows? Stranger things have happened.
Rho, who can’t sign up because his name that he has used for years isn’t long enough for osnews
I think the use of the ‘Core’ branding is bigger news if it really means they are going to fade out ‘Pentium’.
It’s about time too. Pentium still makes me think of a decade old floating point engine
.
Chips may be a commodity, and no, people don’t pick them up like cans of soup, but you’ll find that people do in fact ask the quesion “is it Intel?”. The reason they ask that is because of marketing, pure and simple. I don’t know how you expect a profit-oriented business to act, but updating a logo seems a pretty normal thing to do.
I quite like the new logo, but the “Leap ahead” slogan is weak – it could apply to any company doing anything, and as such is instantly forgettable. Intel Inside had good alliteration, and basically reflected that their products sat at the core of the computers.
thanks -mike
I always feel that a company is in serious trouble when it has to rebrand.
The new logo… looks not much different to the old logo, except the ‘e’, while “Leap Ahead” sounds so…. *dull*, yet positively exciting compared to calling the new processors Core. (Apple Core anyone?)
Still, hopefully they’ll ditch that irritating jingle that’s used on TV ads.
Seriously, that has to be the ugliest logo I’ve seen since AMD came up with their logo. I guess Intel thought the crappy AMD logo is what made AMD’s processors so popular so they decided to one up them and make a crappier lgoo.
The new logo is verry conservative and simple. Might be a good thing, might be a bad thing, but I agree that the tag line is plain dumd. Not sure how they came up with it (I only read a portion of article), but they definately could have done better.
ESPECIALLY with the millions of dollars they have. I mean lets face it, as much as people say Intel sucks, they still make OoDlEs of cash (for now
). Personally I prefer AMD (as a company + products), but Intel should have done better with their public rebranding image. Aka logo + crap tag line.
W/e, If Intel is please with the logo, so be it
–ZaNkY
This is silly and their new saying wreaks of mediocre marketing people in a long business meeting.
Go back kids, you still had the trust of more than 50% of users.
I personally don’t like the logo. There are just too many logos out there that use that use two swirls surrounding a company name, intials or single letter. Their all a little different of course but all use the swirl.
While I don’t think there will be any consumer confusion because it this (after all it says intel in the middle) the design is simply old and boring.
…hey! That’s it! They could use ‘Intel In The Middle’ as their new slogan! Now that has a ring to it.
I expected some big changes, but it looks quite the same IMO. Also IMO, the old one was better.
I’m just glad the Pentium name is finally dead. It was long overdue for retirement. The 586 isn’t exactly the cutting edge anymore after all. Yeah I know that it’s all marketing and consumers don’t have a clue what the name originally meant, but still. They’ve been using the name Pentium 4 now for how many years and different cores? It was getting ridiculous. They should be up to like Pentium 7 by now.
I like AMD’s logos better, for the Athlon 64 series; although, this new one by Intel isn’t a bad one at all. Before I clicked on the link I was expecting it to be a bad one, but it wasn’t. Cool.
–EyeAm
“Just remember to look before you leap.” 🙂
AMD have always been better ever since the Athlon, it’s floating point(FPU) scare the crap out of Intel. Intel have made mistake after mistake, memory bandwith and high Mhz myth keep Intel people awake at night.
RDRAM(rambus), ouch!, thats goto hurt.
So I guess the Intel category icon needs to be updated now, huh? 🙂
In seriousness though, it’s not a bad refresh. They’ve been around forever and the Pentium brand was becoming rather old. Most people I suspect see the sticker and don’t even give it a second thought; it’s just something the manufacturer put on the box. Updating the look gives them a chance to get peoples’ attention again. Of course, if they’re going to do that, they need do some serious work on their product line. Right now, AMD’s offerings for both dual-core and x64 processors look better than Intel’s. We’ll see how this goes.
the new intel logo is nice. why are people hating on intel?? they make the best mobile processors and that’s what the market is shifting to. amd’s mobile processor/platform is no where near pentium m/centrino
they said they’d still keep the intel inside thing but add that new thing as the main deal,
The new logo is no better than the older one; I think it is inferior. The new logo allows a current marketing wonk at Intel to justify his position, by getting his own mark and tossing the mark that was created by someone else.
>>the new intel logo is nice. why are people hating on intel?? they make the best mobile processors and that’s what the market is shifting to. amd’s mobile processor/platform is no where near pentium m/centrino
Before it used to be: “they make the best PC processors”. Now is “they make the best mobile processors”. LOL. Tomorrow will be “they make the best “toy processors”. Things have changed so much in the last 5 years.
I think Intel changing the Pentium brand would be a bad idea. Most people I know measure the age and speed of a computer based on the number that comes after Pentium.
Come on, guys…the logo change worked so well for Digital.
..I always considered the “Intel Inside” sticker to be more of a warning label than a logo. Although “Leper Head” has a nice ring to it too…