Ajay Bhatt is about to be famous. Sort of.
Intel picked the Beaverton researcher as one focus of a national ad campaign that launches Monday, highlighting the people behind the chip maker's technology and making light of the obscurity in which they labor.
The concept is simple: What if Bhatt, and Intel's other scientists, were treated like rock stars?In the commercial, which will air coast-to-coast and around the globe, Bhatt struts into an Intel cafeteria and is greeted by a loud guitar riff, as womenswoon and colleagues press in for his signature.
Except it's not Bhatt, but an actor.
Ajay Bhatt
• Title: Intel fellow, and chief client architect for Intel's mobile platforms
• Claim to fame: Co-inventor of the Universal Serial Bus (USB), a standardized outlet for connecting devices to computers. He's currently working on highly efficient, high-performance laptops.
• Age: 52
• Family: Married, with a daughter in college
• Background: The son of a university professor, Bhatt moved from Baroda, India in 1981 to study in the U.S. He's been with Intel since 1990, and moved to Oregon in 1996.
"Nobody's approached me in the cafeteria asking for my autograph," chuckles Bhatt, 52, who said he has neither the time nor the disposition to be a pitchman.
Intel's ads, dubbed "Sponsors of Tomorrow," represent the company's biggest marketing campaign in three years. Hoping to draw a parallel between itself and its researchers, Intel is making a lighthearted argument that they play a key role in creating new technologies, a role that generally goes unseen in PCs, laptops and other high-tech gadgets. It's a tricky pitch, inasmuch as Intel doesn't sell anything the everyday consumer can buy.
"That's the challenge of being an ingredient brand," said Heather Dixon, an Intel marketing manager. She said Intel hopes the ads will refresh Intel's image, and make its brand a must-have when consumers are PC shopping.
"We want Intel to be top of mind," she said.
It isn't always. For example, Microsoft recently began its own "I'm a PC campaign," showing everyday consumers choosing inexpensive PCs over Apple's Macintosh brand.
Unnoticed in the ads, except by techies, is that some of those consumers pick bargain PCs with chips by Intel's much smaller rival, Advanced Micro Devices. (All Macs use Intel processors.)
Like Apple, Intel hopes to brand itself with a reputation for top quality, if not necessarily the best price. That's a harder job for Intel than for Apple, because Intel doesn't make the computers or have its own stores. It's easy for consumers -- like those in the Microsoft commercial -- to overlook what's inside.
Intel has nonetheless been successful historically at building its brand image, said Frank Grady, president of Grady Britton advertising agency in Portland. In particular, he noted the "Intel Inside" campaign that paired Intel's brand with those of computer manufacturers.
"They are marketing to the consumer through somebody else's product, and I think they've done that very well in the past," Grady said. "It truly can only happen if they have the brand attributes to pull that off."
Tech experts generally regard Intel's microprocessors as best-in-class, but add that Intel's higher performance might go unnoticed by many consumers doing everyday Web surfing and other basic computing.
Intel plans to run its new campaign for at least three years. The company said it plans to spend hundreds of millions of dollars worldwide in 2009 to air the ads and run parallel campaigns online and in retail stores.
San Francisco-based agency Venables Bell & Partners created the new campaign; Portland-based agency CMD will assist with U.S. online and retail marketing.
In the past, Intel has highlighted individual brands -- its Pentium processors, for example, and Centrino wireless technology. Today, those catchy names have given way to unwieldy brands such as Core 2 Duo and Intel's current flagship processor, the Core i7, and the company has moved beyond the "Intel Inside" campaign, which it dropped in 2005 (though it still partners with PC manufacturers for advertising).
Intel is also trying to move beyond its traditional microprocessor business, providing superpowerful "brains" for PCs, laptops and high-end corporate computers called servers.
The company is now developing graphics chips, dabbling in new wireless technologies -- it's a major backer of Clear's new Portland WiMax service -- and is making low-power processors for handheld devices and a popular new class of low-wattage portable computers called netbooks.
Because Intel makes an array of technologies for all kinds of computers, Dixon said, the company is taking the focus off its individual products and trying to build up its corporate name.
That level of abstraction might not play well with shoppers, said Doug Garnett, chief executive of Portland ad agency Atomic Direct and an adjunct advertising professor at Portland State.
"I doubt that it's believable to consumers that an Intel advantage of 'sponsoring tomorrow' would mean much when purchasing a phone, a computer, or any other product," Garnett said.
As an ingredient brand, though, selling a range of products to electronics companies, Garnett said, Intel has to reach a much wider audience. And the ads may be effective in doing that.
"These are messages that may influence manufacturers and investors," he said.
Intel is based in Santa Clara, Calif., but Oregon is its biggest operating hub. The company employs more people in the state, 15,000, than any other company.
Only a handful of them will appear in the new ad campaign, which highlights some obscure inventions that play a big role in computing.
For Bhatt, that key invention was the USB, or universal serial bus. In the 1990s, he was one of the brains behind its development and watched with delight as the thin port became a ubiquitous hub for connecting computers to their keyboards, mice, printers, iPods and thumb drives.
Intel asked Bhatt's permission to feature him in the ads, and he gave it -- and then didn't give the ads much thought. Periodic updates arrived from the company's marketing department, but he paid them little mind until the finished commercial arrived.
"They must have done a lot of research on me," Bhatt said. "They'd been sending me stuff. I just see something come through my BlackBerry. I put it aside."
Intel said it hopes eventually to have its employees play themselves in its ads, but for the first round wanted actors with the comic timing, experience -- and time -- to play the part.
In the ad, mustachioed, elegantly coifed actor Sunil Narkar plays Bhatt, who is cleanshaven and has a spare hairstyle. And the commercial's futuristic, glassy workplace looks nothing like Intel's fabric cubicle farms in Washington County.
Bhatt said his wife was taken aback, but he trusted Intel's marketers to make good decisions.
"Quite frankly, my answer was: You guys do this. I'm sure you'll do the right thing," Bhatt said.
Nonetheless, Bhatt said he's thrilled to see his research recognized -- even with another man's face.
"As a technologist, sometimes you work on things that are difficult for people to understand," Bhatt said. "But USB is one of the things that has exceeded my wildest imagination."
-- Mike Rogoway; [email protected], blog.oregonlive.com/siliconforest; Twitter: @rogoway