If Vodafone’s Zoozoo ads suprised you for their decision to use real people instead of animated characters, Intel recently launched ad comes as more surprise.
Intel, in order to gain market share/improve brand perception started a worldwide campaign that had a tagline“Our rock stars are different from your rock stars.”
The irony? Well, Ajay Bhatt (Chief Platform Architect at Intel, and co-creator of the USB port) featured in the ad is actually a fake Ajay Bhatt (i.e. an actor) who performs the act!
Intel’s ads, dubbed “Sponsors of Tomorrow,” is the biggest marketing campaign in three years and revolves around positioning Intel as a research firm.
But why a fake Ajay Bhatt?
“Intel said it hopes eventually to have its employees play themselves in its ads, but for the first round wanted actors with the comic timing, experience — and time — to play the part.
In the ad, mustachioed, elegantly coifed actor Sunil Narkar plays Bhatt, who is cleanshaven and has a spare hairstyle. And the commercial’s futuristic, glassy workplace looks nothing like Intel’s fabric cubicle farms in Washington County.” – source, via
AMD – Are you going to use this to your benefit?
I was adequately outraged when I came to know the truth behind the fake Ajay Bhatt, 2 weeks back. Like any self-respecting digital citizen, I tweeted my outrage. Within a few minutes, got a tweet back from Intel (@InsideScoopBlog) which said this,
“@beastoftraal great feedback. We hear you so we decided to do this: http://bit.ly/ZW7dL #ajaybhatt”
I tweeted back that I’m least interested in a fake/ real Ajay Bhatt Tee, to which they cryptically said,
“@beastoftraal ok, no worries. Have a an excellent day.”
And guess what, I did have an excellent day, that day
I think having a fake actor beats the entire purpose of building an employee as a super hero. Mighty strange that a brand as big as Intel fails to realize that in this age of social media led drive to authenticity.
Yep – that’s the pt. Now I dont’ even relate to that ad – I actually have started hating Intel for this.
Case for AMD to do some groudbreaking guerilla marketing!
Hmm.. this is really bad.. I really loved the ad till I read this blog. now, the respect is gone and I am sure intel’s brand will take beating for faking this.
rajs
Umm.. Isn’t it still a really cool ad?
I don’t see why this should alter the brand image at all. This would be forgotten in a week.
I like intel because my machine runs on it, and runs well!
The reason they used Sunil Narkar instead of the real Ajay Bhatt, is because Ajay Bhatt was too busy a person to appear in commercials. He was of the opinion that ” do whatever you want with my ‘brandname’ but show me the ad before the actual release”.
I think that speaks more of commitment towards your job, er, isn’t that what this site is about?
The ad was super-cool, btw.