AMD "Fusion" ads focus on graphics, user experience

By David Lawsky

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Forget about specs. PC chip maker Advanced Micro Devices is rebranding itself by showing leaves, scorpions and a teenager playing the guitar.

Instead of geeky specifications, or specs, AMD executives said, its new advertising campaign opening on Thursday focuses on how its computer chips can offer consumers an improved "user experience" in contrast with rival Intel Corp, especially when its comes to handling graphics.

The Sunnyvale, California-based company is a distant second to Intel in the market for microprocessors that act as the heart of the world's 1 billion personal computers.

The new ads emphasize AMD's expertise in computer chip design and how that prowess has been enhanced and integrated into its products through the 2006 acquisition of graphics chip maker ATI. To hammer home this idea, "Fusion" is the catchword that appears in a white, patterned circle of every ad.

"The idea behind fusion is to take technologies and bring them together," Nigel Dessau, AMD's chief marketing officer. The campaign focuses on how the chips are used. They show a teenager using Rain Recording software, a leaf symbolizing carbon reduction with help from IBM and a scorpion image from game developer OTOY.

The Fusion campaign replaces a two-year-old "smarter choice" tagline, which was the last time AMD used ads to make a big splash, and come ahead of the big-selling holiday season.

As part of the campaign, free software will be available from AMD's website that it promises will speed up Microsoft's Vista operating system for people who play computer games.

"It polishes their brand," said Roger Kay, a PC industry analyst with Endpoint Technologies Associates in Wayland, Massachusetts.