Archive for the category Social Media
The surf report from here to eternity (or at least 2011)
Posted by John Taylor in 9:31 AM
Loading ...As I wrote last week, the AMD Financial Analyst Day held this year in Sunnyvale, CA , is an exciting day in that it represents a high-profile update on the state of AMD as an important innovator and business. We unveiled product and corporate roadmaps through 2011, including a technology direction with AMD Fusion that transcends that timeframe. The insights we shared on Fusion development, more widespread use of teraflops-class GPUs for compute, and our parallel performance/low-power x86 cores development in particular made waves in the business and tech trade press.
But as my high school friends might say on those stormy days when it was possible to truly surf off the west coast of Florida: “Some waves are tasty rides, and some knock you on your tail and get sand in your jams.”
So here’s the waves created by some of the media who attended in Sunnyvale or participated via Web cast.
Tasty waves:
- “Frankly, we’re jazzed about the possibilities…” – Darren Murph, Engadget (Thanks Darren, we are too!)
- “AMD has only recently made strides toward putting the pieces of the puzzle together, but it looks like it’s hitting the home stretch.” – Andy Patrizio, Internetnews.com
- “If all of this works, Fusion could be the basis for some compelling products. Rick Bergman, the head of AMD’s Products Group, promised the technology would “literally deliver a supercomputer on your lap . . . with all-day battery performance.” That’s an ambitious plan, but it’s good to see AMD get some of its mojo back.” – John Morris, ZDNet
- “[Bulldozer is] really a very elegant design and the basis for what AMD, Intel and NVIDIA have been talking about for years now. The CPU will do what it does best while the GPU does what it is good at.” – Anand Shimpi, AnandTech
- “Companies rarely make big news at financial analyst day events, but AMD bucked that trend Wednesday by unveiling details of its newly revamped roadmap, its two brand-new processor architectures, and its plans for CPU/GPU integration.” – Jon Stokes, Ars Technica
Life’s-No-Beach Waves:
- “If chip makers competed on the basis of code names rather than products then Advanced Micro Devices might have beaten Intel a long time ago.” – James Niccolai, IDG News Service
- “AMD has long struggled in the mobile segment, but the company’s 2010 roadmap is potentially strong enough to change its fortunes.” – Joel Hruska, Hot Hardware
- “AMD’s Opteron once held the high ground when compared to Intel’s server offerings. We reckon the boot is just about on the other foot…for now at least, and we wait with bated breath to see what kind of performance Bulldozer-driven Opteron can deliver in 2011.” – Sylvie Barak, HEXUS.net
Whether it’s criticism or praise, tasty or sandy, it’s always interesting to see how different media view our telling of the AMD story, and reshape it for their respective audiences. Overall, I like the “surf report” on the 2009 AMD Financial Analyst Day in the sense that media, to a deeper extent than before, perceive AMD has a unique strategy and unique IP to execute it. Yes, there were questions about how well AMD could win at a game currently defined by its competition (CPU-exclusive marketing and benchmarking). And that question can only be answered as AMD executes to its technology vision and design points.
Now, we’ve heard what the media have to say. What’s your feedback? Make some waves.
John Taylor is Director, Global Platform & Product Communications at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied. This blog contains forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are generally preceded by words such as “plans,” “expects,” “believes,” “anticipates” or “intends.” AMD Investors are cautioned that all forward-looking statements in this release involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from current expectations.
Not Just Another Day in the Office
Posted by Catherine Greenlaw in 11:31 AM
PRSourceCode recently wrapped its 2009 Top Tech Communicators Study, in which more than 300 IT and business journalists told them which companies’ public relations departments they felt did the best job getting them the info they wanted to know. Hopefully some of those ‘judges’ are out there reading this post. We are thrilled (we really are – it’s not just PR talk) that AMD’s Global Communications team was named to that list.
Before you think this is just another example of PR on PR, let me assure you this is not about patting ourselves on the back for being good communications professionals. I am going to share some of the reasons we may get it right – but these reasons may surprise you.
AMD DNA
Ask any current or even former employee of AMD to name a few things that stick in their mind about the company, and they’ll invariably say something about how AMD manages to get into your blood, almost becoming another gene on one of those DNA double helix diagrams. It manifests itself most often as a fighting spirit. No matter how you describe it, once you’ve got it, you’ve got it. The people who work in PR are no exception. We possess that spirit. We believe in the company. We believe in the products. We believe in our leadership. And we believe in what we do. We’ve got good stories at AMD, and our company sits at the center of a critical industry that enables great things for people the world over. So at the end of the day, you can believe in us because we believe in ourselves.
VALUE OF PR
We’re fortunate in AMD Global Communications to have a management team that across the board, understands the value that our team brings to the equation. They ‘get’ our contributions, even if it they sometimes difficult to quantify in terms of bottom line dollars. AMD has a management team that empowers us to take risks, while at the same time demand that truth, transparency and integrity remain supreme. So we might diminish the focus on AMD’s own individual product brands in favor of a mainstream consumer brand like VISION to help make purchasing decisions easier for consumers. Or we might create a heated discussion on industry issues such as battery life reporting, even if it the arguments don’t always fall in our favor. When you’ve got truth, transparency and integrity on your side, communication is rewarding.
WE LIKE IT
Let’s face it. Working in communications is not the same as schlepping away as a telemarketer making cold calls. No, in our jobs, we get to talk with you. And here again, we’re fortunate. The media we deal with on a regular basis are extremely well-informed and receptive to the news we provide. We can also have a productive dialogue with our journalists, because we’ve developed mutual respect and trust. In other words, if we do a good job at being communicators, it’s because our customers help make our job easy.
(We also get work with some great people who also help make our jobs easier, both inside of AMD and notably the extended AMD PR team at Bite Communications.)
So a big thanks to all of the media out there who helped bestow this award on us. Raise a glass and toast yourselves. Cheers.
Catherine Greenlaw is a public relations manager at AMD. Her postings are her own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.
People are talking about the 40-watt ACP Six-Core AMD Opteron™ EE Processor
Posted by Phil Hughes in 4:04 PM
(6 votes, average: 4.83 out of 5)Yesterday we launched our latest energy-sipping server processor, the 40-watt ACP, Six-Core AMD Opteron™ EE processor. For those of you scoring at home, 40W ACP / 6 cores = ~6.67W per core.
In case you didn’t have time to read the enormous volume of coverage from Yesterday’s news, we at AMD’s Global PR headquarters here in Austin, TX are happy to provide you with the following summary:
Blogger’s note: Some of you may remember back in 2004 we brought to market a single-core, max TDP 30-watt processor. Very much ahead of the curve as the article suggests.
Here’s some additional info on DDR2 vs. DDR3 memory pricing for servers. Latest data shows customers still need to pay a premium for DDR3.
Here's a chart that shows how AMD does not compromise features in order to save power
“Advanced Micro Devices is also hoping to appeal to cost-conscious data center managers with a new line of low-power, six-core “Istanbul” Opteron CPUs. The 40-watt models join the 75- and 55-watt versions already on the market.” Good Morning Silicon Valley
The above doesn’t even include the 100+ tweets and counting I’ve already seen on this since yesterday. Only a few of the tweets are from me. So yes, people other than me are tweeting about this amazing engineering and manufacturing feat that is the 40-watt ACP Six-Core AMD Opteron EE processor.
Phil Hughes is a senior public relations manager at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.
Boom or Bust
Posted by Phil Hughes in 4:13 PM
This is the final chapter of my blog looking back on the first year of the AMD OpteronTM processor.
If you’re a fan of professional sports, you know that the stretch from April until the end of June is draft time for the big four North American leagues -- NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL. Inevitably during these months, the sports media revisit past drafts and look at some of the biggest draft busts and successes. Take an example from the NFL -- Ryan Leaf (2nd pick, 1st round, 1998) and Tom Brady (199th pick, 6th round 2000) -- epitomize the concepts of bust (Leaf) and boom (Brady.)
Contrast this to the world of microprocessors. The AMD Opteron processor entered the market in April 2003 as a solid, but unproven, option during a time when the industry had been trying to determine if the 64-bit Itanium processor was more hype than substance.
I noted in my first blog that the AMD Opteron processor was met with some skepticism early on due to a lack of initial OEM support. But by the first half of 2004, the AMD Opteron processor was well on its way to being the dark-horse in x86 servers. Sun began to launch the servers it announced late in 2003 and the market was seeing some impressive performance on those systems. In February, the competition did us a big favor when they validated our approach to 64-bit computing by emulating the AMD64 instruction set extensions. In fact, it kicked off the first of several instances in that period where the competition took a page from the AMD playbook (multi-core, processor model numbers and Direct Connect Architecture are just a few more examples of them following the AMD lead.) The competition announcing its plans to incorporate AMD64 extensions served notice to the industry that AMD was ahead of the curve in understanding the needs of enterprise customers.
We had fun at IDF in Feb. 2004 reminding the world who made 64-bit migration easy.
A big helping of “Swordfish”
In the first few months of 2004, the momentum behind the AMD Opteron processor was fast and furious. The teams that supported the AMD Opteron processor were extremely busy but no one was complaining. We all had a lot of sweat equity invested in the AMD Opteron processor and we were now seeing the payoff. While IDF was going on, several of us were working on a project code-name “Swordfish”. “Swordfish” was the codename for our upcoming server launch with HP and it represented probably the biggest milestone for the AMD Opteron processor. Here’s why;
- Most industry watchers assumed HP would probably be the least likely OEM to come on board because of their investment in Itanium;
- HP didn’t make a small commitment to AMD, much like Sun, they went big right out of the gate;
- As the industry-leader, HP’s broad portfolio of AMD servers helped drive the discussion away from AMD being seen as a niche player in HPC;
- HP had a huge footprint among Wall Street IT, which was a critical customer segment for AMD in order to increase our market share.
Slide from HP's launch presentation on February 24, 2004
Rookie of the Year
In April 2004, we went back to NYC to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the launch of the AMD Opteron processor. While our event didn’t quite have the production value that our launch did a year earlier, we opted to go for substance over style. What a stark contrast from a year earlier. IBM was of course back again but joined this time by our new friends from Sun and HP along with an end-user from Verisign.
We had our cake, and ate it too at the AMD Opteron one-year anniversary celebration in NYC
One final thought: at its launch in April 2003, the AMD Opteron processor delivered some unique innovations to an x86 server market hungry for choice. The AMD Opteron processor initially fell into that category of a draft pick that had loads of potential, but not quite a first rounder yet. However, looking back at some of the milestones AMD achieved with the AMD Opteron processor from April 2003 to April 2004, it probably was a clear-cut “Rookie of the Year,” in the x86 server business. Particularly if you read some of the following….
“AMD is viewed as a credible tier-one server processor supplier, which certainly wasn’t the case a year ago,” said Dean McCarron, principal analyst at Mercury Research. InfoWorld, April 19, 2004
The Opteron processor has vaulted AMD to the front lines of the competition between IBM, HP and Sun Microsystems--three of the top four server makers. CNET, April 19, 2004
Overall, AMD shattered industry expectations for Opteron’s first year. The fact that the company’s product is even discussed as a serious Intel alternative in the server market is a major accomplishment. The Register, April 23, 2004
There you have it, some great quotes that sum up the first year of AMD Opteron. Perhaps in another year or two, you will see another blog from me about the first year of our Six-Core AMD Opteron processor, also known as “Istanbul”. Thanks for reading.
Phil Hughes is a senior public relations manager at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.
The Sun Also Rises
Posted by Phil Hughes in 11:44 AM
As part of the build-up toward launching our six-core “Istanbul” processor in June, this is part two of a multi-part blog looking back on the first year of the AMD Opteron™ processor as seen through my personal lens working in AMD Communications.
Starting in third quarter of 2003 following IBM’s launch of its 1U, 2P e325 server, AMD Opteron was slowly building momentum and creating industry buzz. IT customers in the financial services sector who were doing testing on a variety of different AMD Opteron-based systems were seeing impressive results, particularly in 4-processor servers. It was soon clear that the Wall Street IT community talks amongst themselves about technology, and word was spreading quickly about the results they were seeing. The tech press and analysts were starting to catch this feedback indirectly through the Wall Street analysts who heard the chatter from their IT guys.
While this critical end-customer community liked what they were seeing with AMD Opteron, none of them could commit to any large-scale deployments due to lack of enterprise-class systems from a tier-one OEM. The IBM e325 was great for HPC environments, but lacked many of the features required in datacenters.
There are no secrets
This is what I quickly learned about life as a public relations professional in the PC business, it seems like no secret is safe. While not on the same scale, I can sympathize with my PR brethren in the pro sports business trying to keep potential player trades and signings under wraps until negotiations are finalized. Once negotiations between Sun and AMD kicked into high gear the third quarter of 2003, it suddenly became public knowledge. More than two months before Sun announced it planned to offer x86 servers based on AMD Opteron, word was already leaking out. While we were fending off the press with our standard “can’t comment on rumor and speculation” or “you’ll need to contact Sun regarding its future server plans,” there was lots of enthusiasm internally over the upcoming deal with Sun that was code-named “Stinger.”
Even though Sun had little presence with x86 servers at the time, they had a rich history of server innovation and a great reputation for delivering a legitimate enterprise-class solution stack. They were going to launch a diverse portfolio of AMD servers and optimize the Solaris operating system for AMD64. It was a huge morale boost internally and was the start of many activities over the next 6 months that would cast a spotlight on AMD Opteron.
Going back to my earlier point regarding no secrets, two weeks before the announcement, CNET’s Stephen Shankland broke more news on the Sun-AMD partnership, including the announcement date. After that point, the only unknown was how many and what form factor servers they were planning to offer. At his keynote at Comdex, CEO Scott McNealy revealed Sun’s plans for a broad partnership with AMD, details of that announcement can be found here.
A strong finish
While Sun would not begin shipping AMD Opteron servers until early the next year, the announcement gave us more of what we really needed at the time: credibility. It was a turning point in demonstrating that AMD Opteron was more than just an HPC solution.
As 2003 came to a close, AMD Opteron had been in the market for about eight months and market share numbers were starting to show some impact. While most of the early AMD Opteron servers were shipped into HPC environments, there was enough traction for analyst firms such as IDC to start tracking systems that were based on AMD Opteron processors. In December 2003 IDC issued its third quarter system share numbers and a number of reporters latched on to the fact that the AMD Opteron processor was shipped in more servers than Intel’s Itanium processor.
Our intent was never to go after Itanium’s market share as we knew we couldn’t be successful if that was our goal. Both Itanium and AMD Opteron were 64-bit processors but that’s where the similarities ended. AMD Opteron was perhaps the best x86 server processor available by the end of 2003 and our objective was to bring 64-bit into the mainstream server market, not the proprietary space Itanium was playing in. Intel soon recognized this and my next blog will discuss the new battleground that emerged in 2004.
I’ll conclude with this excerpt from an end of year wrap-up story InfoWorld ran at the end of 2003:
“AMD’s Opteron processor truly is the Little Engine That Could. When Opteron launched in April, the Intel x86-compatible 64-bit processor faced a steep uphill battle against Intel’s Itanium. By year’s end, IBM and Microsoft delivered on early promises, and Sun joined the bandwagon. Will Dell and HP be next, or can’t they see Opteron from where they sit behind Intel?”
Up next: “Swordfish anyone?”
Phil Hughes is a senior public relations manager at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.
Did Seth Sayeth the Truth?
Posted by John Taylor in 4:19 PM
(6 votes, average: 3.50 out of 5)Some of you may have read Seth Weintraub’s blog post about Lauren (her video is below), the star of the new Microsoft campaign. In the spirit of conversation and transparency, I want to share the essence of our input, delivered via e-mail at Computer World’s direction, in response to our request to talk to Mr. Weintraub directly about the post.
We understand that the “Apple Ink” blog is intended to be pro-Apple, which is great. I’m pro-Apple too. And pro-Microsoft, pro-HP, pro-Dell, pro-Google. But I’m especially pro-Lauren, and pro-people out there just like her trying to find the best value in buying wondrous PCs and Macs.
Here’s the points we made to Computer World to address some of the more technical aspects of the post, and the opinions based on those points. The text in quotes below comes directly from Seth’s blog:
1. ComputerWorld/Seth: “It runs Vista Home on a slow AMD mobile processor”
· The nearly three-year-old ZDNet article to which Seth links actually refers to the Turion™ 64 X2 TL-56 processor running at 1.8GHz, while the processor included in the HP dv7 cited in the Microsoft ad is the 2.1 GHz AMD Turion™ X2 RM-72 dual-core mobile processor. The HP Pavilion dv7 laptop launched in June 2008, so linking to a ZDNet article from 2006 is incorrect at best and misleading at worst.
2. ComputerWorld/Seth: “it has DDR2 RAM which is what $300 Netbooks run.”
· Current market data from IDC shows that only 29% of the entire PC market is currently using DDR3 because DDR2 is generally seen as sufficient, a statement especially true of those consumers looking for mainstream, well-priced notebooks. What’s more, even high-end notebooks, such as the just-announced Asus G71Gx, feature DDR2 memory.
3. ComputerWorld/Seth: “this is the type of setup that sparked the “Made for Vista” lawsuits.”
· I think Seth is referring to the “Vista Capable” lawsuit. This lawsuit was aimed at notebooks and desktops which failed to visually power the full Windows Vista Premium experience – devices which, by the way, employed our competitor’s integrated graphics solutions.
· AMD is proud of its strong history of providing graphics processors capable of providing the full Windows Vista Premium experience; in fact, AMD was the first to market with WHQL certified Vista drivers. The HP dv7, in fact, is an AMD “Puma” platform-based notebook; Puma brought full HD video capability to mainstream notebook customers.
4. ComputerWorld/Seth: “Its networking is five years old. 802.11G wireless and 100Mb Ethernet are surpassed by $300 Netbooks. 2004 called. It wants its motherboard back.”
· Actually, wireless technology is not found on the motherboard in this AMD platform. AMD was the first to market with platforms that included 802.11 draft n, and today our current platform based on the AMD Turion X2 Ultra features industry-leading wireless capabilities from Atheros, Broadcom, and Ralink and are compatible with both 3G and WiMAX technology. If AMD had its way, every notebook would ship with 802.11N but it is not at all uncommon to find many notebook configurations at retail equipped with 802.11G.
5. ComputerWorld/Seth: “The thing is almost two inches thick and weighs in at almost eight pounds. Do you think that PC buyer wants to be hauling that thing around? She didn’t look like she spends her afternoons pumping iron on Venice Beach.”
· The 17” Macbook Pro weighs a substantial 6.6 pounds, while the dv7 weights exactly 7.8 pounds. Consumers with portability as a priority would surely choose a notebook smaller than 17”. Lauren, for example, did not state ultra portability in her criteria.
6. ComputerWorld/Seth: “The battery is said to last 2.5 hours. Real world usage is always close to around half of that. That means you can’t watch a full movie on a battery charge. It also means that it will probably poop out on that commuter flight from Los Angeles to San Francisco.”
· Again, the HP dv7 is a desktop replacement model known for its multimedia prowess, not a model intended for someone whose primary criteria is portability. However, while unclear whether the model Lauren chose contained a 6 cell or 8 cell battery, the HP dv7 has gotten a reported 2 hours and 47 minutes of battery life when subjected to rigorous testing by LAPTOP Magazine (enough to watch an average length movie on a battery charge).
It looks as though Seth already has updated the post based on input #1 in the above list, and we’re grateful for that. But we hope sharing the full contents of our feedback to Computer World is useful, added perspective.
John Taylor is Director, Global Platform & Product Communications at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.
Server-Side Rendering Back in the Spotlight
Posted by John Taylor in 2:12 PM
News and social media look toward the future of the game and entertainment console
As a boy, I remember the impatient process of flicking my 1970s era game console on-off switch up and down up to 20 times to get my “Adventure” game to display properly. Fast forward 30+ years, and this week I’m trying to determine where in my living room to position my 13” tall Xbox 360 to make room for a new home theater component. This week news media, game publishers and developers are abuzz once again about server-side rendering, with its promise to re-imagine the game console in our living rooms: size, simplicity, power efficiency.
There has been a huge round of initial coverage in response to the revelation by OnLive, a company demoing a new server-side rendering gaming solution, and the follow-up news this week of others innovating in similar ways. Media reactions thus far range from straightforward reporting of the promise OnLive outlined and demonstrated to more critical views of the barriers to success.
We were pleased with the response we received as well in January 2009 when AMD showed off similar technology; the conceptual demos OnLive has shown are kindred spirits to the AMD Fusion Render Cloud concept that Dirk Meyer and Jules Urbach of OTOY presented at CES09. That so many new entrants are entering the mix is validation that this concept captivates the imagination and appears poised to enhance the consumer experience in a meaningful way.
Many reporters, bloggers and industry analysts asked us what the OnLive announcement means to AMD, and whether we see players like OnLive as competition to the AMD Fusion Render Cloud concept. Simply put: the more the merrier. We’re not surprised by these developments and the warm reception from the industry. Server-side rendering has been discussed for years and, AMD had been working for a while on technology that can deliver high-quality, immersive and interactive entertainment experiences directly from the cloud.
Ultimately, our goal is to give consumers access to HD games, videos and everything in between regardless of their location or the HD-capable device they chose. We want the consumer to be able to access HD content (be it a game or a Blu-ray movie) as easily from a seat on the bus as from a couch in the living room.
Granted, this is a tall order and AMD continues to work with a number of partners including OTOY, Image Metrics and Electronic Arts,to name a few. For those following the conversations our January announcement sparked, and similar conversations reignited this week, you can see that the hurdles to having a mass market, consumer-ready product are not minor:
- Sufficient compression to overcome latency and network bandwidth issues still remain a key part of the question.
- One of the things AMD continues to grapple with as well is making that experience seamless and unobtrusive. For instance, most consumers already have any number of devices in their living room, whether it’s a video game console like Xbox 360 or Nintendo Wii (I have both these AMD-powered consoles in my living room), or a media center PC or personal video recorder (PVR). How can those be employed to deliver that HD entertainment experience from the cloud rather than needing yet another piece of hardware in the room?
As we work through these challenges and others as an industry, it’s clear that the AMD Fusion Render Cloud concept, and the broader idea of entertainment delivered over the cloud, offers a real growth opportunity. Like everyone else, we’re excited about the OnLive announcement. It’s important to remember that at the center of these concepts — the heart of what it takes to make this HD cloud experience possible — is a high-performance computing platform that brings together GPU and CPU technologies. That’s at the core of what makes AMD unique in the world of computing innovation, and what drives great digital entertainment experiences.
John Taylor is Director, Global Platform & Product Communications at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.
Your choice, social marketers: 500K bull’s-eyes or 3 million viral video views?
Posted by John Taylor in 11:18 AM
Welcome to the first post of the AMD Unprocessed blog. This is where members of the Global Communications team will discuss with you news, social media, research and opinion relevant to AMD and the global PC industry. I’m John Taylor, director of global platform & product communications for AMD. From me you can expect discussions of the latest innovations, and how news media, social media and industry analysts mold conventional wisdom and shape perception of those innovations and the companies behind them.
Let’s begin with YouTube and the restless pursuit of viral video hits.
When Nigel Dessau joined AMD about a year ago, he drove a shift in our marketing toward activities designed to strike the bull’s eye of an intended target. For the launch of the AMD desktop technology PC platform codenamed “Dragon” and AMD Phenom™ II processors, the bull’s eye was people who like to build their own PCs for video editing and gaming. I refer to this crowd as “Those Who Know” (TWK, pronounced “tweak”) in that they understand how to build a world-class system for their specific pursuits without spending world-class amounts, and many of them like to overclock a processor to get even more performance than its official rating. I’m a level 1 TWK: I build my own systems, but you might not want me to build yours.
For our marketing and communications efforts, we really wanted to strike the target by showing that “Dragon” represented unparalleled value for TWKs. So we brought a few Level 10 TWKs at AMD to the forefront in our marketing: gifted engineers and technologists who love tuning the latest silicon to unlock maximum performance and value.
Two discrete arrows released at our target were videos handsomely edited to show world-record overclocking performances with PCs based on our Dragon platform technology in the hands of AMD’s best and champion overclockers from Finland.*
The older of the two videos dates only to CES09, and has clocked more the 400,000 views even with a runtime of 7 min. 36 sec. 662 comments to-date.
The newer video has only been up for a few weeks, and already has more than 100,000 views. This one is my favorite in how it conveys a sense of place while shooting on-location in Finland. 219 comments thus far.
I argue the vast majority of these views represent the bull’s-eye. The video subject is primarily of interest to TWK types; it’s decidedly not as mainstream as watching YouTube highlights of, say, Premier League goals.
That’s ½ million views combined and counting. Incredible stuff for a semiconductor design company, however some of the biggest viral marketing video hits have clocked 2X, 4X or more that number of views.
Let’s examine the other end of the spectrum of marketing video hits. How about the Cadbury Dairy Milk “A glass and a half full of joy” videos and ads. This is the U.K.’s best-selling candy bar. This is a multi-million Euro (http://www.confectionerynews.com/The-Big-Picture/New-Cadbury-TV-ad-to-drive-dairy-milk-sales) ad campaign that plays well on YouTube. The two AMD videos, in contrast, cost a tiny fraction of that to produce and were not created for a media buy.
The eyebrows video employs whimsical, fresh images set to old-school hip hop (“Don’t Stop the Rock” by Freestyle) to make a tie to the word “joy” in the candy bar tagline. More than 2.5 million views on YouTube and counting.
This video doesn’t tell us about the milk chocolate candy bar, how it tastes, or how it is Fairtrade certified (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7923385.stm). It purely entertains, in the name of “joy.” Same as a chocolate bar. But the connection is abstract.
So, web marketers, which would you prefer? Several million whimsical views that abstractly connect to your product brand? Or 500,000 views that hit your bull’s eye audience with a concrete message?
Well, Cadbury Dairy Milk sales speak for themselves, and “AMD Phenom II” is among the top searched-for products on sites like newegg.com that cater to TWKs like me. As Forrest Gump said, “Perhaps it’s both.”
* Note: AMD’s product warranty does not cover damages caused by overclocking, even when overclocking is enabled via AMD software.
John Taylor is Director, Global Platform & Product Communications at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.