Clearly, the advertisers behind Intel’s new “Go PC” campaign believed they were smart enough to hire actor Justin Long to get a Mac to exalt the virtues of Windows-based PCs. Intel. If only they had thought of giving him something clever to say.
The new “Go PC” campaign includes ads, website banners and a new Intel page titled “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’s a lot to choose from apart from this campaign: claims about battery life that are completely disconnected from countless real-world independent testing and comparisons; boast of Windows-compatible games when users need an Nvidia or AMD graphics card (certainly not Intel-integrated graphics) to play them; showing results with applications that require Rosetta 2, rather than native Apple Silicon applications, to distort the results in favor of Windows PCs.
But the most blatant, hilarious, and / or sad attempt (choose your adjective) against a zinger lies in Intel’s failed attempt to dive into USB-C dongles. In a tweet sent this week, Intel posted a photo of Long holding several USB-C dongles tied together, with the rhetorical question “Does anyone know who they belong to?”
Why, yes, Intel, we know who these USB-C accessories belong to: they are certified by the USB Deployment Forum, of which Intel is a board member.
In fact, Intel is such a big fan and supporter of USB-C that the company uses the same connector for its proprietary Thunderbolt cable. And the Thunderbolt 3 specification, which Intel created, is included in the USB 4 standard, which, if you don’t know, also uses the USB-C connector.
Even better, an ad that highlights the campaign on the cover of Intel’s website Long holding shows 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 give up these dongles yet, Justin.
To be clear, there are some legitimate issues with Apple’s currently limited line of Macs that highlight Intel, including the fact that they only support a single external display. But that completely ignores the fact that M1 is Apple’s entry-level processor and that Apple Silicon is expected to debut this year more powerful. Not to mention those who need multiple external monitors, they can still buy a perfectly capable Mac with (you guessed it) an Intel processor.
No offense to Long (he’s a good actor and hey, a gig is a gig), but Intel’s “Go PC” campaign is little more than a casting trick. I would say that everything is style and has no substance, but to suggest that there is a “style” to Intel’s disassembled and aimless effort would be generous, so to speak.
The set of “using a competitor’s spokesperson to take a look at the script” is nothing new in advertising; in 2019, Sprint did it with the “Can You Hear Me Now?” From Verizon. couple. Sprint merged with T-Mobile less than a year later and the Sprint brand was withdrawn. So how did this campaign work?
Intel’s campaign, of course, responds to Apple moving its Mac platform away from Intel processors. At launch, the “Go PC” effort seems to be on track to create the same level of “magic” that the Verizon guy booked conjured for Sprint, before turning into magenta of shame.
The motto of Intel’s “Go PC” campaign is “Get Real.” Perhaps these ads are more “real” than anyone realizes, revealing Intel as an obsolete brand, stuck in the past and not as smart as the people behind it believe.