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abilities. As the number of businesses and organizations using computers grew, demand for
parts increased, and Intel expanded quickly.
With the PC's surge in popularity in the 1980s, Intel's success continued. In those early
years consumers were entranced by what was already one of branding's biggest success
stories: International Business Machines, or as most people knew them, IBM. IBM had
been the biggest supplier of electronic business devices for most of the 20
th
century. They'd
set industry standards for everything from electric typewriters to mainframes. By the early
'80s, they were doing the same thing with PCs. Consumers wanted their PCs—and almost
anything they associated with digital technology—to be IBM-made, or IBM-compatible.
Intel made a momentous decision to shift their focus to developing and producing micro-
processors in these smaller machines. By the late 1980s, they dominated the field, produ-
cing a huge share of internal PC hardware.
As the '90s dawned, Intel could see the signs of looming competition. The company
was improving its products, making Intel-equipped PCs more and more powerful.
However, it also suffered setbacks in key trademark battles, threatening their branding pro-
cess before it had even gone public. Though hugely successful, Intel realized it was in a
dangerous place. It's primary attributes were products that were inside other products. Con-
sumers were buying PCs with names like Dell, HP and Gateway. These machines relied on
Intel's chips. Yet most consumers had no idea what was in their computer's casing. They
just saw the name on the side. If another company could undercut them on price, or provide
similar quality, Intel might suffer huge losses, and it's real users—PC owners—wouldn't
even notice.
The competition was a threat, but it was also limited. The only customers buying the
chips were the PC makers themselves. Intel already had the inside line, but instead of fight-
ing off rivals with a defensive strategy, the company did something entirely different. Intel
mounted an offensive, branding itself in a whole new way that had never been tried before.
Up until then, the company had aimed its promotional efforts at the PC makers. These were
Intel's only direct customers, so these were the ones they had targeted. This soon changed.
Salt Lake City-based advertising agency, Dahlin Smith White, designed a campaign
that broke the basic rules of marketing. Up until then, ad campaigns had aimed directly
at the people who bought the product. But the campaign they developed for Intel targeted
consumers who would never even see an Intel product. It was based on the notion that a
little-known supplier of internal parts for another company's product could take advantage
of that larger product's popularity to sell more parts. Their goal was to make digital con-
sumers into unwitting allies. If the advertisers could convince the public to think of Intel
