Transmeta Explores Ads; Siemens Rings US Effort

Brandweek, Nov 27, 2000 by Todd Wasserman

Transmeta, the small fry chip maker, has been one of Silicon Valley's best-kept secrets. Even with the buzz generated by its hiring of Linux creator Linus Torvalds, little leaked about the mysterious startup. Now it's time to reverse course.

The Santa Clara, Calif. firm, which raised $273 million in an IPO earlier this month, will launch a branding campaign, nearly all print, in the $10 million range early next year, said Frank Priscaro, dir-brand development. Sanderson Studios, Woodside, Calif., is handling the effort; its current tag is "Lighter, cooler, longer." Sanderson also worked on logos as well as Transmeta's flagship chip, Crusoe.

"Crusoe" conveys the self-sufficiency one achieves with a notebook. (It is, of course, a reference to Robinson Crusoe.) But there will be no Crusoe II or Friday chip, Priscaro said. The main reason: Transmeta's innovative chip design, which puts more stress on software than the chip itself, will eventually be upgradeable via software. Transmeta chips also take up less room than rivals and promise more battery life.

IBM recently charged that there wasn't much of a difference in battery life and rejected Crusoe. While Transmeta has scored deals with Fujitsu and Hitachi in Japan, so far it has only one U.S. partner, Sony.

Despite the new emphasis on branding, Priscaro said the company has no desire to duplicate Intel's "Intel Inside" ingredient branding ads. "We hope to support our (hardware partners) rather than overshadow them," he said, noting that has been an issue with some vendors, including Compaq.

Siemens is giving its cell phones a second go in the U.S. Having opened a 50-person office in San Diego, the German conglomerate is planning a branding campaign next summer and is earmarking $500 million for marketing and advertising through 2002. Siemens will rely on the agency combo of Wieden & Kennedy and J. Walter Thompson for the effort, though it is not known which of their U.S. offices will participate.

Forian Seiche, vp/gm of the unit, said it's also unclear whether creative will carry its "Be Inspired," branding tag.

Siemens exited the market in 1997 despite some snazzy colored phones. One of Siemens' miscalculations was a bet that GSM, a wireless standard in Europe, would be a bigger factor in the U.S. "The U.S. cell phone market has humbled some great names," said lain Gillott, an analyst with IDC in Dallas.

One of those would be Sony, which dropped out of the market in 1998, but may be biding its time for a re-entry. In the meantime, it has made strategic investments in Qualcomm, ArrayCom and PacketVideo, which develop wireless products and applications.

Random data: Mal Ransom, former svp-marketing for the now-defunct Packard Bell-NEC, has surfaced at US Search, a supplier of Web-based data and risk-management services. Ransom previously worked at I Systems, a Wilmington, Mass., Internet appliance firm ... IBM, having held talks to buy tiny PC-maker Monorail (Brandweek, Feb. 7), apparently has decided an alliance is a better idea; Monorail now builds some of Big Blue's low-end systems.