Jayant Murty has the last word on Intel’s Asia-Pacific marketing strategies. He is the director of strategy, media and integrated marketing of Intel for that region. An ex-advertising honcho, he tells Sayantani Kar and Viveat Pinto the microprocessor company’s plans for the mobile market, among other things. Edited excerpts:
Why do you promote a business-to-business technology brand to the end consumer?
We started 20 years ago with our Intel Inside programme. We wanted to be the most pre-eminent brand that you could look for. So, we had to have a direct relationship with the consumer.
The second reason is the role of Intel. We create the right technology to push computer makers into newer areas and let consumers make amazing things with that. It’s not what we make, but what we make happen. What you do with our technology is what inspires us. Increasingly, we are going around the world and celebrating what people do with our technology. Look at something like the Creatives project that supplies us with what people do with our technology. Think of us as Lego blocks.
India is a price-sensitive market, even in case of computers. There are other low-cost chips. Does that pose a challenge?
We have conversations on affordability at our meetings. One thing we believe in is that affordability is a state of mind, not a state of wallet. Absolute prices don’t matter anymore. For us, people are willing to pay a premium. There’s an extraordinary goodwill in the brand because we’ve been here for years. Even for the brands that we sell, we occupy a lot of price points. So, a computer manufacturer can control how expensive the computer can be. We are one component of millions of components that they are all buying.
Intel Atom spun off a universe of hand-held devices. What’s your plan for the phone market?
Our entry into phones is recent. We made the announcement at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this February. We’re launching our first set of phones around the world. In India, we’re doing it with Lava. We bring in performance and user interface, to let the phone user do heavy duty work, as he would on a computer in an easy manner. Most other incumbents come in from different angles of say, battery life, etc.
Is your investment significant in the mobile space than what it has been for laptops and desktops?
It’ll never be instantly the same. Remember, there’s a legacy. Ambition is on par, but it’ll play out over a period. It’s just that we haven’t been in this space so far because it hadn’t been our priority for many years. But it’s a consuming passion of the company now.
With so many players in the market, what’ll be your strategy?
In the US, a contract model with the carrier gives the device for free. In India, you first buy the device and then, go looking for a carrier. So, the strategies will be different for these markets. In India, we’re working with Lava.
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This will also change the way we brand. When people will go to a mobile store, we need to get our retail displays in order and train the store staff. The key is to get one market with one product, beat the best phone in that. But we’ll work on the next phone very quickly because it’s treadmill you can’t get off.
In the multi-screen world of today, is it a headache to have control taken away from the marketer by users with their feedback?
It’s a lot more fun to get feedback. Otherwise, you just keep producing stuff and keep patting yourself on the back about how amazing it is. The interesting thing is when conversations are alive with feedback, you see an opportunity to make changes and not discover the need three months down the line.
What have these feedback told you?
Responses to our campaigns like ‘Museum of Me’ made me believe that you have to do things that are really different from your products to genuinely connect with people. It taught me that the less you brand, the more you get noticed, and vice versa. People don’t like pompous brands, but those which are understated. The other thing was the realisation that we need to focus on untried ideas even if these are risky — because if these are successful, then these spread fast among the audience.
In such a fluid environment, how do you end up measuring their return on your investment?
Digital’s impact on the brand is harder to track. But it lets you track if it’s getting consumed or not far. So, today, with the listening tools, you are listening all the time about buzzwords, what are people saying.
Is it easy to convince people in the boardroom with such measurements?
Yes, because these are all leading indicators. When the conversation around an activity or product is going down, I tell the retail team that they need to launch a promotion. It can decide how you run your business, more than just campaigns. You can either look at the data from the point of view of what just happened or what’s likely to happen.
Do you feel the need to move away from the traditional media to a digital multi-screen approach?
The reality about India is that there are a billion people and there are 20-30 million computers and around 800 million phones. But the brands in India still have to decide whether to have a monologue or a dialogue. There’s a role for both here.
In India, where there isn’t one India, there are villages with hundreds of people becoming consumers for the first time, buying their first soap and shampoo. It’s fine for them to be informed and not inspired. In India, people consume a lot on television. But the point is if you sell, say, 20,000 units of the most expensive car to one part of Bombay, you should feel committed to say that ‘I’m not paying for television’. The audience would be on their smartphones, so a digital campaign can reach them.
Advertisers always speak about digital. But there still seems to be a block when it comes to harnessing this medium and it’s just five per cent of the total spends.
When people move away from the traditional medium, they think of every other medium as means for advertising. You look at the whole world of app (mobile application) stores, it’s about utility and content. It tells you what consumers are looking for. Some of them are looking for the weather to decide what to wear, some of them for the nearest Italian restaurant. It helps curate data in a manner that is useful to users. If the medium is thought of as a way to curate data to make it useful to consumers, then we can see the five per cent becoming 10 per cent very quickly.