The big branding news from Intel is not its upcoming megabucks "Sponsors of Tomorrow" ad campaign -- another sure-to-fail attempt to paint geeks as cool. (I'm referring to the "TV spot portraying the Intel scientist who helped invent the USB drive as a rock star." David Byrne, maybe?) What is welcome news, though, is the quieter "rebadging" effort, which seeks to clarify those hapless stickers identifying the processor inside your PC or laptop.

Sure, if Intel wants reinforce its name with consumers, then TV ads will do the trick. The issue, though, is not that average folks haven't heard of the company, but rather that many of them are unclear about what exactly Intel makes. (I'd bet they know it's "chips"; but not "microprocessors.") In the same way that, in the early 1990s, the non-technical masses thought that AOL was the Internet, I suspect that lots of people believe Intel makes computers. Which they do, but not fully locked and loaded, as it were.

Ad-wise, Intel has been putting its name before consumers in a big way since the early Pentiums in the 1990s. That's when the chip behemoth decided to throttle back on its behind-the-scenes brand building -- where it focused on building heft with OEMs and industry insiders -- in favor of a glitzier, conventional-advertising profile.

Sure, the new stickers, which cut the keyword clutter down by roughly one term, aren't the final word in simplicity. But "Intel Core i7 Inside" cuts to the chase much quicker than the previous verbiage.

News source: InformationWeek