Intel rejiggers its image

Intel last week adopted new branding that it hopes will redefine the company as a leader in consumer electronics.

The Leap Ahead brand will replace its timeworn “Intel Inside” brand.

According to a Wall Street Journal story, Intel’s Eric Kim, a senior vice president at Intel, said that many consumers felt the Intel Inside logo was redundant, “since any Intel product would tend to be inside a computer.”

Intel has used the Intel Inside brand since 1991 and the dropped “e” in the Intel name for 37 years.

The new branding replaces that with the idea of always looking ahead, whether inside or outside a computer. The branding change coincided with the start of the Consumer Electronics Show in New York last week.

Early this year, Intel will also introduce a brand called ViiV (rhymes with “alive”) that focuses on bringing PCs to the home entertainment market.

Meanwhile, AMD is trying to trump Intel’s branding with its own: leapsbeyond.com.

The two adversaries for servers and desktops are heating up their campaigns. Intel’s plan is to capture more of the consumer market – cell phones, cable set-top boxes and PDAs, as well as desktops and laptops.