Ranked #1 in the World
Related Links
Apply Now Brochure
Intel needed a breakthrough in Japan and turned to Kevin Sellers for help.
“Our brand was like nothing in Japan,” Sellers told the students in Professor Rick Baer’s global brand management class July 28 at Thunderbird School of Global Management in Glendale, Ariz. “We were invisible, and it had been that way for years and years and years.”
The U.S. microchip manufacturer had a strong global brand but had dumped millions of dollars into Japan without making a dent in the crowded electronics market. Corporate executives in Santa Clara, Calif., wanted a quick turnaround and appointed Sellers as director of marketing in Japan with high expectations.
Sellers, who now works in Phoenix as Intel’s vice president of investor relations, told the students that his first step in Japan was to gather information. He said successful brand managers are artists, but first they must be scientists.
“Don’t apply the art until you’ve done the science,” he said. “Before you can start dealing with any problem of any kind, you’ve got to know what you’re working with.”
Initially, all Sellers knew is that Intel needed to change its Japanese strategy because things that had been tried in the past had failed. “The definition of insanity is to keep doing what you’ve always done, and expect different results,” Sellers said.
This meant throwing out the company’s old strategy, which involved taking global solutions developed in New York by marketers unfamiliar with the special challenges in Japan and translating these messages into Japanese.
“We like to apply global solutions in the United States, and that doesn’t work,” Sellers said. “You need local solutions.”
Sellers said nearly one year of market research produced a new strategy in Japan that has delivered dramatic results.
Surprisingly, part of the solution centered around a freckle-faced redheaded schoolboy with an endearing smile. The boy became the star of a television ad campaign that used soft humor to create emotional linkage to Intel.
The commercial opens with the boy sitting in a somber schoolroom struggling on a test. Suddenly, the Intel logo flashes on the boy’s forehead with the slogan: “What if Intel was inside him?”
The boy perks up and starts writing furiously on his test paper, drawing surprised looks from his classmates. The boy finishes the test in moments and shows his paper to the teacher. In addition to all the correct test answers, the boy has sketched an impressive rendition of the Mona Lisa.
Sellers said he assumed a Japanese boy would work better in the commercial, but the Japanese ad agency he hired assured him that Japanese have a fascination with redheads. Sellers said that’s the kind of thing that an ad agency in New York would never know.
He showed the commercial to Intel executives, but they weren’t initially impressed. “That’s OK,” Sellers assured them. “You’re not the target audience.”
In the Tokyo region, the ad scored 38th among 10,000 television commercials, and Intel revenue and brand numbers shot upward in the months that followed.
Sellers said the new ad campaign was just one part of a three-pronged attack supported by market research that showed low brand recognition among Japanese women and an ineffective co-branding campaign with electronics manufacturers who use Intel chips inside their products.
In addition to the ad campaign, Sellers said his company renegotiated its terms with its co-branding partners so that the “Intel Inside” logo appeared more prominently with audio in their commercials.
Finally, to reach the female consumers, who make most of the electronics purchases in Japan, Sellers negotiated a high-profile partnership with Disney, one of Japan’s most successful brands.
In the end, Sellers said his success in Japan hinged on his ability to take real data to corporate executives in the United States and make a compelling business case for his ideas.
“If I had showed up in Japan and said I have this cool idea for a new marketing campaign, it would have completely fallen on deaf ears,” Sellers said. “Intel executives were not looking for cool ideas. They were looking for results.”
1 Global Place, Glendale, AZ 85306-6000
+1 (602) 978-7000 | 800-848-9084 (US)
