Menu
Marketing and Sponsorship

Serena Williams latest athlete to get technical as Intel continues its push into sports

Tech giant Intel has scored a “Serena Slam” of its own. The company on April 30 will introduce a TV spot featuring tennis star Serena Williams, winner of 23 Grand Slam singles titles.

Williams is the fourth top athlete to appear in the company’s humorous ads, joining Olympian Michael Phelps, the New England Patriots’ Tom Brady and the Cleveland Cavaliers’ LeBron James.

“I’m a big tech person and I’m into high-tech things,” Williams said just after shooting the spot, for Intel’s seventh-generation core processors.

“I feel like [Intel] wants to align themselves with high-performance athletes and actors,” she said. “I have to give a high performance when I’m working. It’s a great analogy to compare our careers to each other.”

The campaign’s theme is high-tech equals high performance. McGarryBowen and Agency Inside, Intel’s internal agency, worked on the creative for the ad campaign.

The ad shows the tennis champion struggling with a wooden tennis racket while playing against modern women with the latest models. Williams said there’s more to it than just the racket: “We can look up different stats, how we’re playing shots, higher tendencies. None of this was around in the ’90s. It would’ve been unfair if I’d had this advantage back then, but it would be unfair if we didn’t have this advantage now.”

Actor Jim Parsons joins Serena Williams in the new Intel ad.
Photo by: INTEL

Phelps shot a similar spot for Intel on the importance of technology to achieve your best performance. Actor Jim Parsons (“Sheldon” from TV’s “Big Bang Theory”) is a fixture in the campaign, which uses humor to show athletes put in difficult situations by dated equipment. In Williams’ spot, he helps her upgrade to a modern racket.

It’s all part of Intel’s push into sports tech and its ad campaign to support new technologies and the company’s legacy business as the world’s biggest computer chipmaker. “We try to draw this simple analogy between using an outdated computer and the world’s best athletes can’t perform at their best using outdated equipment, either,” said Steve Fund, Intel chief marketing officer. “We’re putting our brand on the biggest stage. We want people to be aware of our tech and to think of us in a different way.”

The company wants to be associated with cutting-edge technology for consuming sports. Intel Sports Group has been pushing into areas including virtual reality (Intel True VR exclusively broadcast the Final Four in the format), esports sponsorship (Intel Extreme Masters events pack arenas around the world), and the 360 Replay technology (used in Final Four and Super Bowl broadcasts).

“It’s hard to clearly calculate ROI on Intel’s strategy, but it is clearly getting some traction, ” said Robert Boland, director of the master of sports administration program at Ohio University. “Aligning with highly marketable personalities accomplishes both goals of giving the brand reach and connectivity with traditional business customers and younger direct consumers.”

Fund said that while other companies leverage sports to reach a target consumer, Intel is integrating its tech into the content delivery.

“Everything we do starts with technology creating an amazing experience for the fan and then we build our marketing plans around that,” he said. It’s a new spin on the once ubiquitous “Intel Inside” campaign, except this time Intel’s technology is inside the broadcast as well as the tech devices.

“We’re not just advertising Intel, we’re advertising the tech that’s in the broadcast,” Fund said. “In the Super Bowl we did that with Tom Brady and the same thing [with LeBron James] in the NCAA Final Four. Our replay technology was in the broadcast; it’s pretty unique.”

The Intel exec said he is happy with the results of the campaigns so far, adding that Intel has not yet completed its agency review.

Intel’s campaign aims to change older consumers’ perceptions while introducing the brand to younger generations that spend more time on mobile devices than the PCs powered by the company’s chips.

“We’re moving to become a data company,” Fund said. “These technologies you see like [360] Replay or VR generate massive amounts of data. No one else has the complete end-to-end solution around data that we do.”

Williams said that she’s looking into Intel’s tech for an edge on the court and that the agreement could go beyond commercials: “360 [Replay] is something I’ve been looking at for a long time now. Intel offers lots of things I’m super interested in and can be helpful in making sure my computer’s working and in my career.”

Robert D. Gray is a writer in California.

SBJ Morning Buzzcast: March 18, 2024

Sports Business Awards nominees unveiled; NWSL's historic opening weekend and takeaways from CFP deal

ESPN’s Jay Bilas, BTN’s Meghan McKeown, and a deep dive into AppleTV+’s The Dynasty

On this week’s Sports Media Podcast from the New York Post and Sports Business Journal, ESPN’s Jay Bilas talks all things NCAA. Big Ten Network’s Meghan McKeown shares her insight into the Caitlin Clark craze. The Boston Globe’s Chad Finn chats all things Bean Town. And SBJ’s Xavier Hunter drops in to share his findings on how the NWSL is making a social media push.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

SBJ I Factor: Nana-Yaw Asamoah

SBJ I Factor features an interview with AMB Sports and Entertainment Chief Commercial Office Nana-Yaw Asamoah. Asamoah, who moved over to AMBSE last year after 14 years at the NFL, talks with SBJ’s Ben Fischer about how his role model parents and older sisters pushed him to shrive, how the power of lifelong learning fuels successful people, and why AMBSE was an opportunity he could not pass up. Asamoah is 2021 SBJ Forty Under 40 honoree. SBJ I Factor is a monthly podcast offering interviews with sports executives who have been recipients of one of the magazine’s awards.

Shareable URL copied to clipboard!

https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Journal/Issues/2017/04/24/Marketing-and-Sponsorship/Intel.aspx

Sorry, something went wrong with the copy but here is the link for you.

https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Journal/Issues/2017/04/24/Marketing-and-Sponsorship/Intel.aspx

CLOSE