Of course, the advertising assistants behind Intel’s new “Go PC” campaign thought they were smart to hire actor Justin Long from “Get a Mac” to extol the virtues of Intel-based Windows PCs. If only they had thought of giving him something smart to say.
The new “Go PC” campaign features commercials, banner ads on websites and a new page from Intel entitled “Apple M1 vs Intel – Which processor is right for you”. Spoiler alert: Intel’s idea of what is “right for you” has no real basis in reality.
There is a lot to choose from besides this campaign: statements about battery life that are completely disconnected from countless independent tests and comparisons in the real world; bragging about Windows-compatible games when users need an Nvidia or AMD graphics card (certainly not an integrated Intel graphics card) to play them; showing results with applications that require Rosetta 2, rather than native Apple Silicon applications, to skew the results in favor of Windows PCs.
But the most shocking, hilarious and / or sad attempt (choose your adjective) for a zinger is Intel’s failed attempt to bury USB-C dongles. On a tweet sent this week, Intel posted a photo of Long holding a series of USB-C dongles strung together, with the rhetorical question “Does anyone know who these dongles belong to?”
Yes, Intel, we know who these USB-C accessories belong to: they are certified by the USB Implementation Forum, of which Intel is a board member.
In fact, Intel is a huge fan and supporter of USB-C that the company uses exactly the same connector for its proprietary Thunderbolt cable. And the Thunderbolt 3 specification, which Intel created, is included in the USB 4 standard, which, you don’t know, also uses the USB-C connector.
Better yet, an ad highlighting the campaign on the first page of the Intel website shows Long holding what appears to be a Dell XPS 13 laptop – an Intel-based Windows PC that has two Thunderbolt USB-C ports and no legacy USB-A ports.
Better not let go of those dongles yet, Justin.
To be clear, there are some legitimate issues with Apple’s currently limited M1 line of Macs, highlighted by Intel, including the fact that they support only a single external display. But this completely ignores the fact that M1 is Apple’s basic processor, and the more powerful Apple Silicon is set to debut this year. Not to mention that those who need multiple external monitors can still buy a perfectly capable Mac with (you guessed it) an Intel processor.
No offense to Long – he’s a great actor and, hey, a show is a show – but Intel’s “Go PC” campaign is little more than a casting trick. I would say it’s all about style and no substance, but to suggest that there is any “style” in Intel’s disjointed and pointless effort would be generous, to say the least.
The whole trope of “using a competitor’s spokesperson to reverse the script” is nothing new in advertising – in 2019, Sprint did it with the “Can You Hear Me Now?” From Verizon? guy. Sprint merged with T-Mobile less than a year later, and the Sprint brand was retired. So, how did this campaign work?
Intel’s campaign, of course, is a response to the fact that Apple is changing its Mac platform from Intel processors. At launch, the “Go PC” effort appears to be on track to create the same level of “magic” that reserving the Verizon guy conjured up for Sprint, before turning magenta with shame.
The slogan for Intel’s “Go PC” campaign is “Get Real”. Perhaps these ads are more “real” than anyone can imagine, revealing Intel as an outdated brand, stuck in the past and not as smart as the people behind it think it is.