AMD Makes its Move

AMD was crushed down from its $210 price in the spring to $128 a share. The issue was that the company paled in comparison to Nvidia which went beyond microprocessors to build an all encompassing AI based infractructure for business.

AMD’s response was silence, but just recently, picked itself up with new acquisition to help it become competitive again. Its data center revenue skyrocketed 115% year over year last quarter.  Some experts feel it could potential climb to $270 a share in 2025, while one, Wedbush thinks it might hit $200 again. It’s postioning itself well, product and innovation wise, however the company still seems reluctant to use marketing and media like Nvidia has.

The big Nvidia big promo conference event last spring really helped stabilize support for the AI technology leader. That was a timely media/marketing event, showing the power of tech marketing.

Their H100 Tensor Core GPU chips and CUDA system are hailed as the market leader, the standard for AI systems being built today. Investors believed the marketing hype and poured money into the company’s stocks to give it a Magnificent 7 cap value of $2.8 Trillion.

Nvidia Showcases the New Processors and Infrastructure

It wasn’t really about the latest GPU they showcased it was instead to showcase their market leadership via their complete AI ecosystem. Nvidia pivoted on the “AI infrastructure ecosystem” theme, one that Intel, AMD, or Qualcomm couldn’t contest. They simply explained that they had a big value add — a complete infrastructure for AI computing for business. Competitors had no such thing and were therefore relegated to retail chip hawkers in comparison.

Over 2024, Nvidia soared, while the above truth sunk in resulting in AMD dropping from $210 to $128.  AI investors fully believe that Nvidia is only company worth investing in, even if it’s not true.

The NVIDIA conference event says “we’re the number one dominant brand in the AI chip space” and there’s no reason to buy from anyone else including AMD.”

That conference event gave the tech and investment media all they needed for headline news stories and the focus for big advertising and PR benefits. The event too, brought top buyers and influencers together for an immersive experience in the leading edge of AI computing. This means Nvidia got first dibs on shaping the media’s beliefs about where AI is and where it’s going.

AMD’s stock plunged with the overall market correction this summer, but has been regaining in the past few weeks. There’s more volatility ahead, however the company is responding to its biggest weaknesses and trying to maintain a viable marketing position against Nvidia. They’re learning the hard way why marketing, promotion and PR are important.

AMD lacked this capacity for an AI-ecosystem to facilitate more services to its chips customers.  They finally responded by purchasing a Finnish artificial intelligence AI lab start-up and its 300 employees called Silo AI for $665 million.

And this week, AMD followed up with the purchase of New Jersey based artificial intelligence infrastructure group ZT Systems in a $4.9bn cash and stock transaction.  ZT Systems builds custom computing infrastructure for the biggest AI “hyperscalers” that may include Microsoft, Meta and Amazon. The comparisons between Nvidia and AMD are difficult to comprehend, but this only makes AMDs marketing efforts that much more important to their sales outcomes.

AMD’s chief executive Lisa Su said the ZT takeover will allow the company’s largest customers to more rapidly deploy AMD’s AI infrastructure, given their engineers understand the challenges of designing and managing high-performance and high-density systems at a massive scale.

In a UK Times interview, Su said “It brings a thousand world-class design engineers into our team, it allows us to develop silicon and systems in parallel and, most importantly, get the newest AI infrastructure up and running in data centers as fast as possible.  It really helps us deploy our technology much faster because this is what our customers are telling us.”

Every tech company needs to educate prospects, support the media, and promote their big technology wins to tech audiences. Of course, the product has to be competitive, and Su looks like she’s solving that deficit. 

Marketing Can Take AMD to Where It Needs to Go

AMD needs to up its full marketing mix and reach investors and AI-hungry tech company CEOs via search, social media and tech influencers.  Perception is important, and if the media and investment community are hypnotized by Nvidia, it’s going to hamper AMDs brand and customer’s evalution and choice of ecosystems.

AMD could go one better. With investors seeing the potential and the low stock price, their financial help could help AMD catapult to Nvidia status. Is Nvidia’s all it’s cracked up to be as presented in the media?  What if it’s not? Perceptions can be changed. And with Nvidia’s tech maturity, they may not have the big news stories to fend off AMD.

Market Leadership Trumps Everything Else

Leadership can’t be taken for granted and Nvidia’s marketing team knows it. Copycats will be duplicating everything Nvidia is, has and can offer. Nvidia is seeing mounting attacks on all fronts from Intel, AMD, Broadcom and even consumer companies including Apple, Facebook, and Google.

Leading companies can’t abandon marketing at any time. Because when they do, competitors pick up speed and leave them in the dust. These quiet, missing periods are key times when competitors can capture market presence, building brand, traffic and leads. When golden opportunities are handed to you, you should capitalize on them.

AMD’s stock price recovering nicely, and as the Silo AI and ZT Systems acquisition’s meaning sinks in, the price should rise much more. Investors will start to take AMD seriously if AMD markets their new ecosystem well.

Investment analysts were giving AMD the thumbs up even before they realized AMD was doing something serious. Now, the stock is beginning to look good.

Incredibly, I still like AMD and believe it can and will surmount its obvious weaknesses and evolve as a manufacturer, software provider, and marketing force. However, it will need more euphoria.

AMD Stock Sinking With No Attempt to Revive

Nvidia’s stock has held its value, but AMD stock price has fallen. It’s down more than the others which means serious investors are full of doubts about the company’s management. Before they all get canned, they should push the reset button and become a marketing-first company. Allowing the company’s brand to be blown around by winds created by Nvidia is not wise.

Investors must be persuaded, and consumers too are lead by what tech experts say about AMD. That voice has to be enthusiastic, confident and trained to support AMD’s brand and stock value.

The silence during this dropping price phase is unsettling for AMD stockholders. And many are getting out of AMD stock. The recent announcement by China that AMD chips are being banned there, doesn’t help.

How Can AMD Turn it Around?

• get focused about the real value proposition for its products
• focus on key markets if that’s where they say the action is (AI-powered laptops)
• get serious about the overall marketing and brand awareness drive
• target and reach influencers/journalists/bloggers in the AI space
• increase advertising and promotion
• don’t rely on the benevolence of brand fans and instead give them the material they need to promote the company (free content)
• de-emphasize “here’s our stuff” communications for “here’s how we’re great” content
• talk about revenue/profit picture and don’t let detractors/competitors shape AMD’s outlook
• work with key AI technology influencers to showcase AMDs technology and popularity
• work with gaming community to promote AMDs amazing gaming products
• use advanced web/social analytics software to monitor key metrics such as website traffic, conversion rates, engagement, and customer acquisition costs.

Marketing Failure Will Hurt Long-Term Confidence

Failing at marketing loses a company’s fan base including influencers, experts, analysts, buyers and current customers. It’s an insidious downward spiral process that AMD’s marketing director should understand.

Lisa Su did an incredible job of taking this company from the bottom 15 years ago and building tremendous product and sales successes. However, she’s not a marketer or promoter. And that’s a big problem. Her lack of panache and believability as a star-level promoter (see Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Richard Branson) makes the company invisible and forgettable. It’s completely dependent on its sales development team who are fully dependent on technical product superiority, which it doesn’t have.

AMD competes directly with Nvidia which pretty well lines it up for a daily beating in the media. So when Lisa Su positions it on technical superiority or niche markets (AI laptops) and up against the mighty Nvidia, it pales, and investors sell the stock. Is her silence a showing of calm confidence, frozen in fear, or a just a lack of confidence in their current marketing and communications strategy?

This long-run downward of late (-15% from the high) after the AI euphoria peak in March might not stop anytime soon.

Right now with rate cuts off the table, Americans are losing confidence in the 2024 economy. And that is certain to dampen development of AI systems and products.  High-interest rates hurt because chip development and systems require a lot of capital.

However, experts point out that we’re in the early innings of AI ball game and of course these companies including AMD will come back. At some AMD’s stock will soar and then I and many others can cash out.

AMD hasn’t shown me that they can be a market leader, only a follower behind Nvidia. And with mounting competition of strong marketing competitors, AMDs going to have their small marketshare challenged.

The point I’d like to make is that marketing and branding are powerful business tools. Value is perceived value. Nvidia’s strength built via market leadership drowns everyone else out. If you’re invisible, not in the news, and actively promoting your chip’s strengths and market niche leadership, your brand dies.

AMD has a weak marketing effort and it does affect the stock price, brand value, and future sales revenue.

They can turn it around with a more substantial paid social media and Google paid click and remarketing campaign. They connect with and reach journalists, bloggers and industry analysts via Linkedin with remarketing campaigns. They can creative useful, credible and authoritative content on their website and in content marketing using expert SEO strategy combined with visuals that show they are competitive with Nvidia, and ahead of Intel, Broadcom, and the rest of the AI wannabees.

In this case, authoritative online content does have an impact on investors and brand ambassadors.

Let’s not forget that AMD has let down their followers and fans. We’re all disappointed in AMD’s leadership right now. It’s time for them to turn it around.

See more on the 3 month, 6 month, and current stock market forecasts.