Ultrabook Ads: Intel Preps New Laptop Advertising Campaign (VIDEO)

"Your great-grandkids just called. They want their computer back."

So goes one of the new advertising slogans for Intel's Ultrabooks, part of a giant marketing push by Intel to position its lightweight notebooks as devices from "the future." A term recently coined by Intel to describe a new class of slim, lightweight, fast-waking laptops that use the company's low-power processors, "Ultrabooks" from companies like HP, Asus, and Dell have all recently been released in 2012, and now Intel is throwing a whole bunch of cash -- a figure in the "hundreds of millions of dollars," per Intel -- behind a huge advertising campaign determined to get the word out about this new category of computers.

All of the ads in this enormous campaign -- in print, on the Internet, and on television -- will attempt to make consumers think of Ultrabooks as a futuristic, state-of-the-art technology, and of thicker, heavier laptops as an artifact of the past.

Intel recently released its first of three television ads, all of which will which depict historical characters using clunky PCs being disrupted by characters from the present enjoying the speed and portability of Ultrabooks. The one below, called "Desperado," is the initial one out of the gate and is apparently typical of the tone and style.

WATCH:

Follow-up ads will include spots called "House of Flying Laptops" (with an Ang Lee-esque martial arts theme) and "Round Table" (which takes place during the time of King Arthur).

The tagline for those ads: "Suddenly, everything else seems old-fashioned. Ultrabook. Inspired by Intel."

The PC market is expected to grow about 4.4 percent this year, according to research by Gartner, and Intel certainly hopes that part of that growth will be fueled by Ultrabook sales, given its stake in the new category's success. It has already invested 300 million dollars in companies manufacturing Ultrabooks, and with "hundreds of millions" more sunk into this campaign, you can bet Intel has Ultra-high hopes for its de facto MacBook Air competitors.

And there are, we should note, a whole lot of them. At the Consumer Electronics Show in January, we saw at least eight different Ultrabooks unveiled, and there are many, many more -- including Samsung's intriguing Series 9 notebooks -- that have been announced and released since.

The next wave of Ultrabooks, meanwhile, is already being closely watched and is hotly anticipated in some corners. New Ultrabooks will include Intel's next-generation Ivy Bridge processors, which should bring even faster computing and much-improved battery life. Ultrabooks with those processors are apparently due in late April or early May.

Until then, we have our "Desperado" commercial and the expectation of a raft of new Intel ads coming to a television, newspaper, website, Twitter feed and Facebook sidebar near you. Ultrabooks may or may not be "the future," but Ultrabook advertisements are definitely the now.

Below, check out the Ultrabooks that debuted in January at CES 2012 -- many of which are now available for sale.

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Comments

[kufone]

05:15 AM on 05/30/2012

A good notebook, I like
http://www.elecachat.fr/dell-inspiron-15r.html

[TisKishnsing]

01:05 PM on 04/08/2012

Did they do anything about the lousy windows operating system?
I do hope they have a serious look into the BSOD

[BulldogDad]

01:53 PM on 04/07/2012

A few years back, my wife and I were at a mall in Atlanta. We ran across an Apple store and decided to go in and browse. A girl at the entrance to the store stopped us and asked us what we wanted. We told her we wanted to see what was available from Apple. She said, "You can't come in unless you intend to buy something." We haven't been back.

[jsarets]

10:48 AM on 04/06/2012

Intel is not competing against Apple. Apple is Intel's flagship customer, and of course, the ultrabooks are powered by the same Intel chips that power the MacBook Air. The situation here is that Intel can't compete (at least not yet) with the ARM vendors (e.g. Samsung, Qualcomm, NVIDIA, and TI) in the phone and tablet markets which are partially displacing notebooks and substantially slowing their replacement rate. And the PC OEMs (e.g. HP, Dell, Lenovo, etc.) are pretty much clueless as the market is shifting from modular plug-n-play systems to integrated unibody devices. Intel is dealing with Apple and a bunch of dim-witted dodo birds that can't shoot straight. So Intel is graciously pointing them in the right direction and showering them with money. This last point is important. Apple gets a lot of credit for being brilliant and visionary and so forth -- and they are to an extent -- but their greatest advantage is the comical ineptitude of their competitors from the traditional PC industry and the lack of application platform experience in the traditional consumer electronics industry. Apple is the only computer company that learned how to be a consumer electronics company. Now Intel has to force the PC companies to learn as well, because the consumer electronics companies are learning how to do application platforms, and they have better relationships with the ARM vendors than they do with Intel.

[ProudToBeVeryLiberal]

03:56 PM on 04/06/2012

"Apple is the only computer company that learned how to be a consumer electronics company."

Not necessarily something to admire, if you aren't just the average consumer with average needs but expect computers to be customized to your needs and use them in more "clever" ways than just browsing social media sites and editing your vacation video. But if what you mean is to say that Apple is in the business of selling expensive fashion accessories for the masses of people who don't really know computers (and are largely afraid of them), then we totally agree.

[Samuel Bun]

08:10 AM on 04/07/2012

You say ultrabooks are powered by the same Intel chips that power the MacBook Air. It's the other way around. Apple computers are now powered by the same chips that the rest of the industry has used for years.

[Marc Driftmeyer]

05:30 AM on 04/08/2012

They are referring to the specific low heat variant that first debuted in the Macbook AIR, before the rest of the Industry.

[maurilius]

10:32 AM on 04/06/2012

The problem is that these machines run Windows, which is terrible, clunky, buggy, old, done, and becoming irrelevant.

Mac OS is designed for the Mac hardware. They're the only manufacturers to do that. This is why there machines are better than anything HP will ever produce.

[jgeurian21]

10:57 AM on 04/06/2012

"The problem is that these machines run Windows, which is terrible, clunky, buggy, old, done, and becoming irrelevant."

Oh come on, that is simply absurd. 90%+ of the world uses Windows for a reason. I am sure that major Fortune 500 companies use it because it is terrible and buggy.

[farleft1917]

12:14 PM on 04/06/2012

I use Macs but have been playing with Windows 8 preview and it's amazing. I would not write off Windows or HP yet. Despite the massive bias Apple is not in % terms near catching up with even XP.

I am finding OSX 10.7 ugly and horrible to use. The iPhones are looking dated despite having great ease of use and Apple's great customer service. Windows 8 is making me seriously consider switching away from the increasingly mindless Apple OSX.

Apple has not upgraded its MacPro and unlike the HP z800 workstations I cannot upgrade the XEON cpus.

There's a pump and dump bubble developing around Apple, similar to the property and tulip bubbles.

[ProudToBeVeryLiberal]

04:57 PM on 04/06/2012

"Apple has not upgraded its MacPro"

Most likely they will drop the MacPro line entirely, since they're losing money on it. So, the Mac will become an even closer and non-pro system. Besides, they've already lost many pro customers with the FCP fiasco in the video business and Logic that can't keep up with Cubase/Nuendo (which incidentally runs much better in Windows 7) in the audio arena.

[jgeurian21]

10:03 AM on 04/06/2012

Why ask if this commercial will make you forget about the Air? For one more people run Vista than Linux and OSX combined. Think about that for a minute. MS has more machines running a OS that everyone hated than every machine running OSX and Linux on the planet combined. That is why when I went to Best Buy this past weekend there were 50+ people messing with Windows PCs and the Apple area had no one.

[jsarets]

10:14 AM on 04/06/2012

Sure, but at this rate, Android devices will outnumber Windows devices by 2016.

[jgeurian21]

10:44 AM on 04/06/2012

Sure....but one is a recently new product on the market (smartphones) and the other has been around for decades. I think Gartner has something like 36% of people in the US own a smartphone whereas there is something like 66% own a PC. Heck my wife just got her first smartphone a few days ago, but it for sure doesn't replace her laptop she uses for work. Or at least until Quicken and the like can run on the iPad.

[ProudToBeVeryLiberal]

04:59 PM on 04/06/2012

Consider that the vast majority of Android devices are phones. Apples and oranges.

[Steve Most]

08:50 AM on 04/06/2012

This ad strategy will only help the category that the Macbook Air created. Apple will earn the largest slice of sales with new Macbook PRO Airs this year.

Also, these "from the future" ads would work better with Tablets vs. Older Laptops.

[buck6439]

09:43 AM on 04/06/2012

I agree about the tablet, the way Intel seems to try to add to a market that was already there with something that is already generally good quality without adding anything other than to the apparent average cost being higher than the air has been or at least about the same for similar feature, which is ironic seeing as how often the reason people have classically given for not trying apple products is cost versus other similar products made by other company's. And as for marketing on tv and online, they seem to love now to try to push things with ether semi-corny add vertising, pushing something that has already been done by another brand or company as being a brand new or entirely unique technology and/ or idea, and using features that not many people really want or at least need as the major reason that they apparently think they should make and sell a Product

[thtech]

09:49 AM on 04/06/2012

This is just the start, there will be ivy bridge models this fall with air like specs for 600 to 700 bucks. There will also be convertible models that are both a tablet and laptop, at significant savings. Lenovo has a model like this for the cost of an air, and it's a tablet too!

[jgeurian21]

10:14 AM on 04/06/2012

LOL......Apple sales are about 1/10th of what other OEMs have. Apple sells about 5 million PCs per year and 1 OEM sells 5 million per quarter. There is a reason why Apple has a market share of about 6%.

[maurilius]

10:36 AM on 04/06/2012

They are only 6% because they're ok with that. And they're at that number because of where they price their products. They won't sacrifice quality and great design to raise that number. PCs are inferior to Apple products, by a long shot. Apple cares about great design, user experience, and yes, profit.

Analogy, PC = Chrysler Apple = BMW. There are more Chryslers on the road than BMWs. Does that indicate that Chrysler is a better product than a BMW? uh, No.

[macchugsid]

02:27 AM on 04/08/2012

Wrong! this is an excerpt from Apples 1st Quarter 2012 sales report and I quote:

The Company sold 37.04 million iPhones in the quarter, representing 128 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 15.43 million iPads during the quarter, a 111 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. The Company sold 5.2 million Macs during the quarter, a 26 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 15.4 million iPods, a 21 percent unit decline from the year-ago quarter.

Please note these are quarterly numbers. I am guessing they have just about saturated the iPod market by now. Yea, Yea I know, McDonalds sell a lot of hamburgers but.............

Or how about this quote:

Microsoft has warned that revenues and profits in its Windows division will be lower than expected, as new figures showed that sales of PCs shrank by about 1% worldwide in the fourth quarter of 2011 and barely grew over the calendar year.

Tami Reller, chief financial officer of the Windows unit, said on Tuesday that analysts' expectations that the PC market had shrunk by 1% were likely too optimistic, a view echoed at a meeting the same day with brokers JP Morgan & Chase by Microsoft's general manager of investor relations Bill Koefoed.

Yea. yea, we all know, apple sells crap with old components. Doesn't have Ivy Bridge, USB 3.0, latest video, and on and on ad nauseum.

[KPinSEA]

05:14 AM on 04/06/2012

The last dieing gasp of the notebook before tablets make them extinct.

[clearthinker2008]

06:45 AM on 04/06/2012

I believe there's a place for both. I have a tablet and a laptop. I play on my tablet and I work on my laptop. I just can't really work on a tablet, but maybe that's just me. I have recipes to write, and stuff like that and a tablet is completely annoying to me for stuff like that.

[ProudToBeVeryLiberal]

08:02 AM on 04/06/2012

Tablets cannot replace computers. You can't write on a tablet, you can't run scientific apps on a tablet, you can't run anything memory-, graphic- or CPU-intensive on a tablet. Tablets are mediocre devices to read ebooks (which dedicated ebook readers like the kindle do better), to watch video content (which real computers can do much better, try to watch or, even worse, edit 1080p footage on a tablet...), to listen to music (which dedicated digital music players/recorders like those from Tascam do much better), to browse the internet (which still looks much better on bigger screens) and do email (anything with a real keyboard still b.e.a.t.s them at that too), to take pictures and video (which DSRL's do immensely better. Heck, even compacts wildly outperform them!)

Tablets are digital consumption devices which do many things but none particularly well.

[jsarets]

09:49 AM on 04/06/2012

I tend to agree with you that tablets cannot replace notebooks -- yet.

But within the next 2-3 years, that could change. The hardware performance is getting pretty close already. The quad-core PowerVR stream processors have more than enough performance to decode 1080p H.264 video, and so does the very clever Broadcom VideoCore stream processor (as seen in the $35 Raspberry Pi).

The 64-bit ARMv8 chips are expected in 2014. In the meantime, the ARMv7 chips are achieving desktop-class pipeline widths in 1W power envelopes. The Qualcomm Krait and Cortex-A15 cores can decode four and issue three instructions per clock (per core) with out-of-order dispatch and speculative execution (aided by ARM's predicated instruction set).

On the hardware side, Intel is pitting their 17W ultrabook chips against 1W tablet chips, and considering the huge power gap, the performance gain is highly underwhelming, especially with regard to graphics (stream processing). You can't buy an ultrabook (or a MacBook Air) with a 1080p display, because Intel's graphics unit can't cope. But the new iPad can -- on far less power.

As for input, bluetooth keyboard/trackpad solves that problem as long as there is appropriate OS support for a pointer-based UI mode. Windows 8 will test those waters. Ubuntu Linux already has a quick hack which allows users to plug their Android device (tablet or phone) into an external display and run an X session with a full-featured desktop shell.

[maurilius]

10:38 AM on 04/06/2012

Apple will make the laptop obsolete at some point.

[Michael Johnson 1]

05:06 AM on 04/06/2012

Oh my god. Didn't care about the Air, and I don't care about these "ultra-portables". Overpriced, under-powered pieces of trash.

[MichaelMcKLA]

04:33 AM on 04/06/2012

Apple blazes paths, everyone else imitates...much later on. LOL

[clearthinker2008]

06:46 AM on 04/06/2012

I disagree, Apple is like those old BASF commercials. They don't come up with ideas they just make them better.......................and market them better.

[maurilius]

10:39 AM on 04/06/2012

No, they make them better to. Example - unibody. It's simply better design than multiple layers of components. Every product they make introduces new technology that others ultimately adopt (USB, FireWire, Retina, multi-touch, form factor, etc.).

[ProudToBeVeryLiberal]

07:46 AM on 04/06/2012

How many Apple products do you know that have an Ivy Bridge CPU? Oh yeah, they'll get them, but only LATER, as it ALWAYS happens. But I bet you believe computers are fashion accessories, right?

[maurilius]

10:42 AM on 04/06/2012

Apple products that do not run Ivy Bridge will process circles around any PC machine that does. this is in part because Apple is able to develop their hardware and OS to work very efficiently. This is why apple products are far superior to PC stuff, regardless of the processor.

[MichaelMcKLA]

03:39 PM on 04/06/2012

I bet you've been ticked off at Apple since, oh, 1978.

[DMSmith]

03:20 AM on 04/06/2012

If you need a cheesy commercial to get my attention, your computer's not worth forgetting my Air. Period.

[Ppenguinator]

06:07 PM on 04/06/2012

And apple don't have cheesy adverts?

[macchugsid]

12:01 AM on 04/08/2012

Not usually. But, I guess that all depends on your definition of cheesy, eh.

[jaredbrain]

03:05 AM on 04/06/2012

oh good, more technology we can replace every year for no reason

[macchugsid]

03:38 AM on 04/08/2012

Why?

[vespachild]

02:43 AM on 04/06/2012

They told me that Intel was coming up with ultrabooks but I didn't believe it
now I cannot wait to get my hands on one of them

[maurilius]

10:43 AM on 04/06/2012

and that wonderful MS os.

[Ppenguinator]

06:07 PM on 04/06/2012

Yeah, it is pretty good, isn't it?

[SvrWx]

02:03 AM on 04/06/2012

I don't know if these laptops will have this but do they have touchscreens? To me that would seem to be one of the big things people would be wanting in a computer these days.

[jsarets]

08:59 AM on 04/06/2012

Some ultrabooks will have touchscreens. Most of these will have double-hinged clamshells or displays which flip around on a central pivot so that the display is exposed when the clamshell is closed. With the clamshell open, the touchscreen would be rather awkward to use.

[buck6439]

10:06 AM on 04/06/2012

could put a position lock on it so it doesn't move the screen position when you use the touch screen with the clam shell open, seems pretty doable, at least in theory

[SvrWx]

08:58 AM on 04/07/2012

Interesting. It's funny. I have an Inspiron from back in 2009 that I still use and there have been so many times that I have touched the screen to move stuff. It's amazing how quickly someone gets use to something.

[thtech]

09:49 AM on 04/06/2012

there will be models like that this summer and fall.

[kenn]

01:25 AM on 04/06/2012

I doubt Tyler Durden could get a reaction on this incredibly blah commercial even with his "extra frames". Watching this beyond-meh work, only saddens me knowing that the $1M spent shooting this drivel, could have been put to better use feeding seagulls warm poutin.