I remember hearing about Intel’s deal with BMW’s Sauber F1 Team and being impressed by the move. I mean, imagine the amount of global marketing that they could achieve through 165 million F1 race fans across the world! Then I found out that Intel made a big-big mistake.

You see, an audience of 165 million is amazing, yet what about an audience of two billion people? I’m talking about one in every three individuals on this planet here. So what kind of mass global marketing platform is this you ask?

Telenovelas!

That’s right, telenovelas – Latin-American soap dramas. According to Javier Lizarzaburu of BBC’s World Service Close Up program, “[telenovelas] are possibly the number-one form of human entertainment on the planet.”

I never really thought that novelas could be that popular; I remember my mother and other family members indulging in the overly melodramatic shows on Univision and Telemundo. Yet dig a little deeper and you’ll find that novelas have made some interesting inroads into Asia. India went so far as to adapt a version of Betty la Fea (Betty the Ugly Girl) for their own programming, and I even recall my roommate’s conversation with an Indonesian girl who watched Latin-American soap operas all the time.

So what should Intel, Apple, AMD, or any other global company do? Forget Mariah Carey or Seal, they should be doing whatever it takes to get their products into the hands of Latin-American soap stars! Better yet, plug some ideas about a novela where two people (preferably working in an engineering firm or clean room) are brought together through an iPod or Centrino laptop!

Sincerely,
‘El’ Closet Entrepreneur

Links used for this post: Worldscreen.com, BBC News

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