AMD Reboots Its Brand Alongside Its Business

identity?

Taylor: We began by conducting research, which showed that the AMD brand overall is stronger than any of our product brands individually. We also learned that the more people know our brand, the more they prefer it. Based on those insights, we decided to launch a unified brand platform with every piece of marketing aligned to the same concept: “together we advance_”.

The new tagline serves in part as a shorthand for our culture at AMD, where we come together to address solutions to some of the world’s most important challenges and are open to learning from one another. We also have a very diverse workforce, and that’s reflected in a new internal campaign that showcases the achievements of more than 200 individual employees and teams.

The phrase “together we advance_” also represents AMD’s role in the industry at large. The semiconductor industry has struggled at times with innovation—for example, in the early 2000s, when new PCs tended to have incremental improvements in features such as processing power and battery life. Today, we see many opportunities to make big advances in technology, particularly when it comes to AI. That emphasis on innovation is inspiring not only for employees, but also for partners. It’s a message that we’re planning to shake things up.

Tell me more about the internal campaign, and more broadly, what role your marketing organization plays in advancing AMD’s DEI and sustainability goals.

Every week, we feature interviews with different employees on our intranet portal and in our weekly newsletter. They come from a range of backgrounds, and that diversity underscores the message that anyone can excel at AMD. It’s important for people to see that someone they identify with can design a supercomputer, for example, or advance to a senior leadership position in tech. Our Chair and CEO, Lisa Su, also speaks regularly at events encouraging women to choose STEM careers. Increasing representation is a big priority for us, and marketing plays an important role in that effort.

We’re also engaged in telling the story of our sustainability initiatives, with an emphasis on understanding what value they bring to our customers. For example, most C-suite executives now have some type of sustainability goal or mindset, and we want to share the message that AMD technology can help them realize those goals.

AMD’s marketing team has played an important role in executing the business strategy. How have you partnered with the larger organization and fostered collaboration in the C-suite? 

When I stepped into the CMO role, I had already spent a significant amount of time working with the business. That experience and the relationships I established have helped me drive alignment and avoid getting boxed into one corporate lane. Every Monday morning, I start the week by meeting with our CEO. I try to make the most of our time together by learning what’s on her mind and by sharing how marketing and communications can help solve the business challenges she’s thinking about. Over the years, I have also built a strong relationship with our chief sales officer, Darren Grasby. We have weekly conversations that help me understand what customer feedback or market trends he’s focused on, for example, or whether he’s worried about the linkage between sales and marketing in a specific category.

How do you measure the effectiveness of your marketing strategy?

We track awareness, consideration, and preference among senior IT decision-makers, gamers, and consumers who are about to make a purchase or have done so within the past 12 months. While those metrics are important, we’re also very tuned in to the brand attributes that are most significant to those audiences. For example, data center decision-makers want to know whether a brand they’re buying is a technology leader—so we’re focused on moving the needle on that perception.

We’re also developing a set of metrics to better understand how our partner marketing efforts contribute to sales. We can easily track open rate and engagement, for example. But we can’t always assess whether our advertisements led to a purchase. Because a large percentage of our marketing is partner-led, it’s important that we have a deep understanding of its effectiveness. Ultimately, we are working to create a unified digital platform where partners can plan, report, and measure their marketing efforts with AMD—including sell-out.

What are the biggest challenges and opportunities your marketing organization faces in the next few years?

Our No. 1 priority is to continue building the reputation of the AMD brand. We want to be the most trusted brand in IT, data centers, and AI—and we will keep driving insights into the company to understand what makes our customers see us as a market leader. Within the marketing organization, we also want to ensure that our ongoing digital transformation pays off. When it comes to automation, our investments need to make it easier for the marketing team to do their most important work.

From a business perspective, we expect that data centers will continue to be a significant area of growth for AMD, which means that partnerships with cloud service providers, server providers, and server software vendors are a critical area of focus. Yet even as we train our sights on data centers, we can’t forget that we have multiple audiences to consider. One of the greatest challenges—but one of the most fun parts—of my job at AMD is that we talk to everyone from gamers to IT decision-makers to CIOs to developers. Knowing what moments matter and what information matters helps us stay on track.