Jim Parsons, ‘Big Bang Theory’ Star, to Promote Intel as Innovator
New episodes of “The Big Bang Theory,” which is now in its eighth season, appear on CBS, while reruns are shown on the cable channel TBS as well as broadcast stations in local markets around the country. For instance, a viewer in New York could have watched six episodes on Thursday night: a new one on CBS along with five reruns on TBS and two local channels. (That does not count episodes on cbs.com, video on demand or DVDs.)
The campaign is the first work from a new worldwide creative agency for Intel, McGarryBowen in New York. It is also the first campaign under the aegis of Steve Fund, who was named chief marketing officer of Intel six months ago by Brian Krzanich, who took over as chief executive of Intel, the world’s largest semiconductor company, in May 2013.
The focus of the campaign is less to sell products with Intel inside (as the slogan goes), and more to burnish the Intel image by promoting Intel as a leader in innovative technology. In some commercials and videos, Mr. Parsons talks up what Intel calls the RealSense 3-D camera, which is to be built into laptops and tablets. In others, Mr. Parsons sneaks into an Intel laboratory and gleefully plays with secret technologies before being discovered and ejected. He runs into a worker in a hallway and blurts out: “Have you see what’s in there? They have ...” Before he can spill any beans, he is cut off.
Intel is striving to remain competitive in a changing tech landscape as the PC, its longtime mainstay, makes way for mobile devices and wearables. Intel executives were concerned last month when, for the first time in a decade, the company fell out of the top 10 in the Interbrand Best Global Brands report, compiled by the Interbrand unit of the Omnicom Group. (Intel ranked 12th in the 2014 report, down from ninth last year and eighth in 2012.)
The goal is to “revitalize the brand,” Mr. Fund said in a telephone interview, by making sure that Intel is perceived as progressive and gets credit for “helping enable all the great user experiences” in “so much more than PCs.”
“Because we’re launching this campaign at a very noisy time, over the holidays, we wanted to grab people’s attention,” he added, with what is Mr. Parsons’s “first campaign since he became famous.” (Mr. Parsons appeared years ago in ads for brands like Arby’s FedEx and Quiznos.)
Intel did not want Mr. Parsons to reprise Sheldon and play a character who is a technological wunderkind or know-it-all, Mr. Fund said, but rather one who would convey that “our technology and our role in enabling these experiences is such a ‘wow.’ ”
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There was also a desire for someone who could be funny, he added, to help the campaign have “a very different feel from the other tech advertising.”
Intel announced last month that McGarryBowen, part of the Dentsu Aegis Network division of Dentsu, would take over creative duties from Venables Bell & Partners in San Francisco, which had worked with Intel since 2009.
“The decision to approach this in a comedic way was one that intrigued me from the beginning,” said Gordon Bowen, chairman and chief creative officer of McGarryBowen, offering a quotation, attributed to Oscar Wilde, that goes, “If you’re going to tell people the truth, make them laugh.”
Mr. Parsons “liked the scripts and liked playing someone who will be the consumer advocate, the person who doesn’t know what Intel is up to and is wowed: ‘Really? You can do that now?’ ” Mr. Bowen said.
The goal is to convey that Intel technology like RealSense is “science fiction turning into science fact, coming to life and being made real,” he added.
The campaign “is really just the beginning,” Mr. Bowen said. “It sets us up for a campaign that tells you there’s a new Intel that is bringing things to market that will surprise and delight you.”
Mr. Fund concurred. “McGarryBowen is working on crafting an entirely new brand platform,” he said, that is planned to make its debut “sometime in the early spring.”
There will be many elements to the campaign, which Intel and McGarryBowen were still working on as of Thursday in realms like editing and deciding which spots to run. There are to be 10 commercials, five for television and five for YouTube, along with about 35 videos for Facebook, Twitter and Vine.
Of the $85.4 million that Intel spent last year on ads, $50.2 million was spent in the fourth quarter, according to the Kantar Media unit of WPP. In 2012, when Intel spent $53.8 million on ads, $21.2 million was spent in the fourth quarter.
Mr. Parsons joins a lengthening list of openly gay, lesbian and transsexual performers who are taking star turns on Madison Avenue. Others include Neil Patrick Harris, for brands like Heineken Light and London Fog; Laverne Cox, for brands like Revlon; and Ellen DeGeneres, for brands like Olay; this week, the Olay maker, Procter & Gamble, announced, for the first time, that it supports same-sex marriage.