Intel Will Outsource Marketing To Accenture and AI, Laying Off Its Own Workers 57
Intel is outsourcing much of its marketing work to Accenture, "as new CEO Lip-Bu Tan works to slash costs and improve the chipmaker's operations," reports OregonLive. From the report: The company said it believes Accenture, using artificial intelligence, will do a better job connecting with customers. It says it will tell most marketing employees by July 11 whether it plans to lay them off. "The transition of our marketing and operations functions will result in significant changes to team structures, including potential headcount reductions, with only lean teams remaining," Intel told employees in a notice describing its plans. The Oregonian/OregonLive reviewed a copy of the material.
Intel declined to say how many workers will lose their jobs or how many work in its marketing organization, which employs people at sites around the globe, including in Oregon. But it acknowledged its relationship with Accenture in a statement to The Oregonian/OregonLive. "As we announced earlier this year, we are taking steps to become a leaner, faster and more efficient company," Intel said. "As part of this, we are focused on modernizing our digital capabilities to serve our customers better and strengthen our brand. Accenture is a longtime partner and trusted leader in these areas and we look forward to expanding our work together."
Intel declined to say how many workers will lose their jobs or how many work in its marketing organization, which employs people at sites around the globe, including in Oregon. But it acknowledged its relationship with Accenture in a statement to The Oregonian/OregonLive. "As we announced earlier this year, we are taking steps to become a leaner, faster and more efficient company," Intel said. "As part of this, we are focused on modernizing our digital capabilities to serve our customers better and strengthen our brand. Accenture is a longtime partner and trusted leader in these areas and we look forward to expanding our work together."
Re:They make chips. (Score:5, Insightful)
But outsourcing to Accenture seems a sure path to wasting a lot more money than previously.
Re:They make chips. (Score:5, Insightful)
It sounds like they've firmly planted their feet on the road to oblivion.
Re:They make chips. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: They make chips. (Score:4, Informative)
I've worked with them. Your comment is spot on.
I'd add that their high priced consultants are grossly untrained. They take anyone with a degree in anything and put them on a 12 month internal course where 6 months of that is "soft skills". They don't know even the basics.
Re: They make chips. (Score:3)
The bullshit-o-meter will reach new levels, especially when using AI.
Anyone that have seen the AI suggestions from Google search results will know how bad it can get.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
But outsourcing to Accenture seems a sure path to wasting a lot more money than previously.
This is Intel we're talking about. Their marketing team literally could not be any worse than it was. Even if it costs more to get Accenture to do it it still would waste less money than what the incompetent idiots at Intel did. Like, they had marketing so incredibly bad that they attempted to erase it from the internet after being called out on it, the "Core truths" campaign which really should have just been named "core lies".
Re: They make chips. (Score:3)
I'm not disagreeing with what you say about Intel's marketing, but I'm guessing you have never worked with Accenture. They send interns and charge hundreds an hour for them. The only thing they deliver is lies to justify more of their own staff.
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Oh no I 100% know how Accenture works. My bother inlaw and his wife both worked for them (actually they met at a training course while working for them). They definitely send clueless interns and charge through the nose.
My point was: This would still produce a better outcome than the absolute cuckelfuckery that was coming out of Intel's marketing department the past 5 years. Heck I think their 5 year old daughter could produce better marketing material. At this point Intel's shithouse marketing in the past
Re: They make chips. (Score:2)
Accenture digital marketing business is one of the biggest digital marketing providers in the world. Intel is in an aggressive cost out transformation so if they are going with a premium rate card service provider like Accenture, that tells me their existing cost base is insanely bloated or low quality.
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I bought my first ARM64 laptop last year, and while it's not 100% there yet - particularly in terms of performances for heavy desktop apps - it's a very convincing alternative to the traditional x86 stuff.
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Mine's an MNT Reform [mntre.com]. Even fully loaded, its performances are lackluster at best. Think entry-level laptop from 5 years ago kind of perforrmances. Or maybe top-of-the-line Raspberry Pi. But performance is not the point of this machine.
Still, sluggish though it is, it's quick enough for 95% of what I do. And since I'm not into modern games, it works fine for me for gaming too.
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Which one did you buy? Can you install a generic Linux distro on it? SBBR compliant? UEFI? The biggest thing preventing me from buying arm has always been the funky boot loaders, devicetree, and vendor-specific kernel forks. And RISC-V has all the same issues.
Re: Whatever (Score:2)
Re: Whatever (Score:2)
Re: Whatever (Score:2)
You're commingling a few issues.
The choices you make w.r.t. memory hierarchy, fabrics, accelerators, power and thermal management, die area, process, etc. have a much larger impact than the choice of ARM vs. X86 vs. RISCV vs. ...
You can make high performance ARM, RISCV, X86. You can make low cost ARM, RISCV, X86. You can make low power ARM, RISCV, X86.
Pick a design target, and with enough money, smart people, and an ability to execute you can hit that target with any of those ISAs or several of the other I
Enshittification progress (Score:3, Insightful)
0%...10%...20%...30%...40%...50%...60%...70%...80%...90%...%100
Complete.
Have a nice day!
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What do you mean? People love AI slop!
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What do you mean? People love AI slop!
Correction: Investors loved AI slop!
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Sigh, no mod points for me today... This is on target.
See also the comments on AI in restaurants: https://slashdot.org/story/25/... [slashdot.org]
Marketing is a logical thing to outsource (Score:3)
Few companies that do something else, are actually good at marketing.
With that said, I'm not sure Accenture is a go-to name for marketing, they're more of a staff augmentation company. Not sure they'll be much better at it than Intel itself.
Re:Marketing is a logical thing to outsource (Score:5, Interesting)
I did a job at Accenture's office in SF and in a hallway there's a timeline of accomplishments and in the early 90's they take credit for the idea of "dynamic airline ticket pricing", so Accenture is the innovator (or to blame) for the fact that you will see different prices with different browsers and for different people and frankly so yeah take from that what you will about the kind of company they are dealing with.
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If Accenture didn't invent it, somebody else would have.
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If Accenture didn't invent it, somebody else would have.
I think their point is that Accenture is proud to have "innovated" that idea.
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Yeah, OK. IMO they deserve neither the credit, nor the blame.
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I don't think blame is the right way to describe it, just kind of funny in a sad way since here on an innovation board is something that I would say maybe 90% of the population if you polled them on that would say they don't like it.
I can't recall but has any of us here ever felt we saved significant money or the purchasing and flight process better because of this, I guess the folks who's job it is to maintain these things, they like it, feels like just a thing that only really exists to add some percentag
Re:Marketing is a logical thing to outsource (Score:5, Interesting)
If Accenture didn't invent it, somebody else would have.
This was actually invented by a guy sitting on a rug in the Middle East about 4000 years ago.
"For you?? ... Mmmm, I would give you the goat for twenty pieces of silver. Take or leave."
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so Accenture is the innovator (or to blame) for the fact that you will see different prices with different browsers
I for one thank Accenture for setting up a system where Internet Explorer users subsidise cheap tickets for Firefox users. And yes that was literally the outcome of it. We ran Slashdot stories back in the day of how IE would give you a higher ticket price.
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and Mac owners/users paid the most
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I will say that every single local business around me has stopped using regular people in their ads and just uses AI now. As a tech nerd it's a huge turn off because I associate AI with scams but I'm not sure regular people are that plugged in or that the critical thinking
Lean mean... (Score:5, Funny)
Stock BuyBacks (Score:3, Insightful)
Remember that's $800 billion it's going to exit the economy. Also half of all rural hospitals will be closing.
There's a reason why the big beautiful bill doesn't really go into effect until after the midterm elections.
When all that hits every major corporation is going t
There's nothing wrong with deficit spending (Score:1)
When the government borrows money the vast majority of it, 85%, it owes to itself. i.e. its own citizens. That's not debt that's money supply. As long as your economy is growing and more goods and services are being produced and there is enough to meet demand it's fine.
All of those are under normal circumstances true with the exception of the pandemic caused by that idiot Trump (remember kids Obama had a similar pandemic and he kept it in China). We do ha
Re: (Score:2)
Mod parent funnier. Root of the joke is the insane focus on profit maximization.
Another potential joke related to food production? If profit is the only consideration, then only the most profitable food would be produced. Leading to to the Only McDonald's Catastrophe?
Wait, what? (Score:3)
The transition of our marketing and operations functions will result in significant changes
I can sort of see outsourcing marketing but to, y'know, a marketing company.
However, outsourcing of operations is going to be grab-the-popcorn levels of interesting...
Re: Wait, what? (Score:2)
The only way I can rationalize such an outwardly dumb decision is he legitimately doesn't know what the company will look like a year from now. So they're going to remove as many of the outside layers as they can to expose the core buisness, then as that reconfigures its the contractors headache to manage the impacts. Eventually when you hit a stable buisness model you can bring the work back in house.
Or... its to enable easy scrapping and selling of the company for parts if he can't get market traction. Le
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Are there any unions in play? Because outsourcing something like operations sounds like one way you might get rid of a union and replace it with underpaid contractors.
Circling the drain (Score:2)
With every passing month it's getting more difficult to see any way Intel can get out of this mess they're in.
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They don't want to. They either get unfair market share with lies or they refuse to play. Whatever slows progress the best.
riches be trippin' (Score:5, Insightful)
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Another post where I wish I had moderator points today....
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You left out how they also take as many loans as they can against the business for expansion, pay themselves large amount from that money, then exit leaving the companies so buried in debt they disappear a few years later.
Great for the share price.. (Score:2)
.. of AMD
Accenture will bleed Intel dry and do nothing of value, just like they always do. Intel have badly lost their way.
dumbest fucking thing I've ever heard (Score:1)
First of all marketing is a dark art. If you don't respect marketing you have never seen what marketing can do when done well. Like, the subtleties of what is being done are not even apparent to most people. Intel is of such a size that it should be done well. It's not going to be done well when it's outsourced. And to think AI, of all things, can do it? What the fuck bro.
Second, mentally intensive tasks which the company needs on an on-going basis are NEVER done better (for money spent) when outsourced. O
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Shrug (Score:4, Insightful)
How separable is 'marketing'? (Score:2)
There's the consumer facing stuff; 'intel inside' stickers and sponsoring overclocking influencers and whatnot. Probably aligns with some poking at engine and middleware vendors to make sure that the characteristics Intel adds to their chips are catered to, whether that be new instructions or not behav