Chip advertising costs billions, not working well?

Investor’s Business Daily is carrying a story about the money the chipmakers spend to get customers familiar with their wares. There are billions are dollars being spent, but a recent survey by research firm In-Stat found that branding in the chip industry isn’t working well.

One finding: Consumers often know chip brand names such as Centrino and Opteron, but they don’t know that Intel makes Centrino and Advanced Micro Devices makes Opteron.

And then they carelessly let their freakishly confusing codenames circulate for years in the press, further diluting their brands and so thoroughly confusing everyone it’s a wonder anyone can remember even the most basic facts about chip products.

The good news, though, is that Intel is on top of it

“Is there confusion over brand names? Definitely,” said Donald MacDonald, Intel vice president for global marketing. “This isn’t new. We identified this problem many years ago.”

Excellent. So long as they’ve identified it, we’re all good to go.