I’m pleased to highlight another Intel guest blogger today.  Kevin Sellers is the VP of Creative Services and Digital Marketing at Intel.  He’s the creative mind behind Intel’s advertising campaign “A New Era” and has spent months developing and optimizing the work.  One of the things I admire about Kevin is how open he is about the process and his focus on optimization and improvement.  Creative jobs are one of the hardest in the industry with everyone being an “expert” and often providing unsolicited advice and help.  His passion here is visible.

Guest Blog Post by Kevin Sellers

As we hear all too often – the PC is dead.  Or rather, it was proclaimed dead by media and analysts for a while now. It’s an enticing and alluring sound bite… it sounds prophetic and somehow insightful.  At Intel, we don’t agree. But the reason we don’t agree is not because we blindly love the PC and just don’t want to let go; rather, we don’t agree because the PC is not a static thing. As Andy Grove and Paul Otellini have said many times, “the PC is the most Darwinian device in the world.”  So… we don’t agree because Ultrabooks will herald in yet an entirely new era in personal computing.  The Ultrabook promise is about being highly mobile, always connected, always on, offering a no-compromise PC as well as tablet experience with touch, improved security, voice capability, etc. (Note: not all of these features are available today of course… but are coming soon).  Ultrabooks are compelling, stylish, and different.

We have had a few ‘New Eras’ in the past.  With Pentium MMX, we ushered in the era of the home PC.  We allowed users to experience multimedia on their PCs that made them great consumer devices.  In 2003, we ushered in the era of the unwired PC with Centrino allowing the PC to go outside of the home or office and become truly mobile.  With Ultrabooks, we are entering the next major era of personal computing.

No surprise then that for our marketing campaign after reviewing nearly a dozen concepts from different agencies, we gravitated to an idea called, literally, “A New Era”. The campaign features three different spots: Desperado (highlighting the responsiveness and quickness of the Ultrabook), House of Flying Laptops (highlighting the battery life), and Roundtable (highlighting performance and form factor).  Each spot shows the power of the new category that is Ultrabook. Each ad ends with a metaphoric twist as the original ancient setting transforms to a modern-day one. A voiceover at the end says, “Suddenly, everything else seems old-fashioned. Ultrabook. Inspired by Intel.” We aimed at creating ads that would stand out from the crowded ad space in technology, jumpstart the category awareness, and build Intel’s brand.

And we’ve seen amazing results. Ours spots seem to be resonating with consumers. They like the big, cinematic feel of the ads and they are different than most ads they see on TV. Of note, House of Flying Laptops was ranked in the top 15 ads over the past 12 months among technology brands by an ad rating agency called AceMetrix—just behind one iPad commercial and just ahead of a different iPad commercial.

But we would like to hear your thoughts. What do you like or don’t like about our ads? What do you think we should improve? Do you currently own an Ultrabook? If yes, what do you like about it? If not, why?