Intel Launches Ambitious "Visual Life" Campaign

Intel revolutionized the computer business with the production of powerful, advanced microprocessors. It also revolutionized brand advertising with its 1991 "Intel Inside" campaign, marking the first time a PC component manufacturer successfully communicated directly to computer buyers. To this day, consumers around the world recognize the "bum-bum bum-bum" tune that accompanied its logo animation in the classic Intel Inside television campaign.

Now Intel is boldly expanding on that decade of branding with a new global digital and experiential campaign designed to launch its Second Generation Intel Core Processor family, going visual to pitch its product line as offering "Visibly Smart" performance for the consumer's "Visual Life."

Billed as the brand's "most ambitious" global digital campaign yet, it marks a seismic shift away from its business market positioning to become a consumer brand. A spokesman tells us that the Visual Life campaign does not replace existing slogans like "Sponsors of Tomorrow," nor is it dropping the distinctive audio branding that made it a household name. 

The new campaign's premise, according to Intel, is that "from the moment we are born, we experience life visually. We think, imagine, and even speak in visual terms." Visual Life thus focuses around the visual life of a mainstream consumer and how Intel processors are an essential component of that life.

The campaign debuted at the recent Consumer Electronics Show (CES), where consumers experienced live demos of devices enhanced by the brand's Core Processors, featuring music, film and live entertainment from musicians and VJs.

A Visual Life-branded website acts as the hub for user- and Intel-generated content. Consumers are encouraged to share their experiences and upload creations to the site, which will distribute the content simultaneously to Intel's Facebook and YouTube pages, and vice versa.

The campaign also includes a series of short films that will appear across all Intel digital platforms. The original web films are designed to spark conversation and engage consumers, and will roll out across major markets worldwide this year.

The first film (below) offers a look at the "Visual Life" of American blogger and fashion photographer Scott Schumann, whose blog and personal brand are dubbed "The Sartorialist." The 7-minute film has already logged over 475,000 views. Amsterdam Worldwide, the agency that heads up the brand campaign's social media activity, says this volume has been generated without any social media advertising whatsoever.

The new Visual Life campaign has a human, soft and lush, visually rich feel to it — decidedly different from the iconic 1992 Intel Inside TV commercial, created by George Lucas' Industrial Light and Magic, that took viewers on a fanciful animated trip through the innards of a personal computer.

But times have changed. Now consumers' visual world is more about high quality streamed video on everything from notebooks to tablets to smartphones, than about whiz-bang technology. This modern visual world, apparently, is one that Intel wants to be part of.