Intel and social media

Intel has, for the length of my professional career, been masterful at marketing (nevermind the Pentium FDIV bug).

Beyond the famous "Intel Inside" campaign, Intel also has a well deserved reputation for being extraordinarily disciplined in its announcements of new products. Simply put, an entire ecosystem of businesses rely on Intel processors - so Intel customers and partners have intense opinions about how and when it launches new chipsets. In the late 90s, I worked with HP on their Netserver line of Intel-based servers - I learned that Intel culturally became unusually disciplined and sometimes tight lipped during product launches - sometimes to the chagrin of partners like HP.

In other words, I would have anticipated that culturally Intel might struggle in the new world of social media. Could they transfer from the highly coordinated communication efforts of the late 90s to a world where engineers, partners and millions of other interested individuals blog - where one accidental posting could ruin the announcements for partners such as HP, IBM or Dell?

This year, I've been very impressed with Intel as it tackles social media. Members of Intel's team include Kelly Feller and Michael Brito.

A few of the impressive steps this team has taken just over the past month:
- Intel launched it's public social media guidelines.
- Intel launched the "What's Inside You" contest.

It is cool to see Intel - a company who might culturally have very good reasons to drag its feet on its social media front - become so active. It's also cool to see their Intel "What's inside you" campaign - it reminds me of a few contests we've run at Page One for Fortune 500 companies (we can't name) and a small Japanese company called Plat'Home.