Speaking of David and Goliath, A.M.D. is fighting a big battle with Intel who is dominating the PC processor market. The New York Times featured a story (free registration required) on the epic battle so far. A.M.D. placed full page ads in several national newspapers in order to get their story out.
Clearly A.M.D. was hoping to gain public support. But David Kroll, a spokesman for A.M.D. who worked on the campaign, said the main goal was simply to place A.M.D. in the public consciousness.
“Many people aren’t even aware of A.M.D. outside of the technology space, so we felt like we needed to do something extra,” Mr. Kroll said. “We saw it as a way to get our word out unfiltered.”
OK, this maybe isn’t a bad start. So, how does A.M.D. reinforce theses ads? They ask readers of the ads to go to a page on A.M.D.’s website, www.amd.com/breakfree. Once readers land on that page, they’re greeeted by a letter from A.M.D.’s Prez/CEO Hector Ruiz. Makes sense. The letter states that Intel’s practices have harmed A.M.D., A.M.D.’s partners, A.M.D.’s customers, and… oh yeah, some consumers as well. Wait, who’s reading this? I thought we were talking about relevence to the public here, but consumers are mentioned almost as an afterthought. Not only do you have to search for references to consumers (it’s mostly about A.M.D. and large corporate buyers), then Ruiz recommends that people read their “48 page, detailed complaint. 48 page? DETAILED? Hold me back! I can’t wait to get my hands on that tempting piece of rapturous literature! Ugh. Who’s going to read that, besides lawyers?
So, what do I do now? They leave me with this hearty call to action:
To share your thoughts about innovation and fair and open competition with us, please e-mail breakfree@amd.com.
What? No blog? No forum? Heck, I can’t even find that “brilliant” ad that they spent an ungodly amount of money placing in the national pubs (and how much would it cost to put it on their website?). Just send an email to an ambiguous address of an unknown person, or persons, who may totally disregard any comments or stories that I may toil over expending my energies and time upon? Uh, no thanks. By the way, why don’t I get Hector’s email address? Guess he’s too busy talking to other execs and those big corporate buyers to deal with me. It sends the message that he really doesn’t care about consumers like me. So why should we care about him, A.M.D. or their plight with Intel? I have no reason to care, because even though they had the perfect opportunity to do so… they didn’t give me one.
A.M.D. made one critical mistake (that lead to many mistakes) in this David vs. Goliath battle. They thought they were David. Wrong! The consumer is.