NVIDIA to launch consumer marketing campaign in Mideast

Graphics company NVIDIA is planning to launch a consumer marketing campaign in the Middle East in the first half of next year to raise awareness of the brand.

The firm is the inventor of the graphics processing unit (GPU), a processor that generates interactive visuals on workstations, personal computers, game consoles and mobile devices.

NVIDIA serves the entertainment and consumer market with its GeForce products, the professional design and visualisation market with its Quadro products and the high-performance computing market with its Tesla products.

"Our products are available with all the brands like HP and Apple but the problem is that only technical people are familiar with the name," said Serge Lemonde, Director of Marketing, Emea and India. "It is essential now to get to the heart of the consumers. This campaign will help us address segments beyond gamers.

"The first campaign is targeted at traditional gamers and will be called Graphics Plus. The second campaign, called Optimised PC, will target the creative segment and end-users. This is mainly because there is shift in the industry, especially with the GPU. It can be used by creative people who use Adobe Photoshop regularly.

"Such applications can work easily on the GPU as it is faster than the traditional central processing unit (CPU). The GPU can have up to 240 cores where a CPU normally has four.

"This facilitates the running of massive parallel applications. The Optimised PC campaign is also targeted at users who are not familiar with NVIDIA or GeForce.

"These users pay at least $800 (Dh2,940) for a CPU from Intel or AMD and are not even aware that for the same price or less they could get a GPU. Today these users don't require a quad core to work with Excel or Powerpoint," Lemonde said.

NVIDIA will use direct advertising and also work with channel partners. This is the first time it has chosen to communicate directly with end-users. There will also be events run by the vendor, based on its product lines.

NVIDIA will start the first leg of the campaign in the fourth quarter of 2008 in the US, followed by Europe in the first quarter of 2009. The Middle East campaign will kick off after that. "The region is relevant as it contributes 43 per cent towards NVIDIA's business in my territory in terms of volume and 50 per cent of the revenue," added Lemonde. "Millions of dollars will be pumped into the region when the campaign kicks off next year."

Follow Emirates 24|7 on Google News.