The new Intel campaign is called "Blue Guys" because it features guys who are blue. They are also mute, dressed in clingy black leotard-like things, wearing facial expressions that range from wide-eyed amazement to horror (with a dash of utter incomprehension).

And this is very interesting, because when I first saw one of the ads, I made a similar face. Knowing Intel's recent stock-price woes, you might also think the Blue Guys are either former or current execs - which would certainly explain the horror. (In fact, the Blue Guys are now identified in the ads as the former New York, now Las Vegas performance art troupe "Blue Man Group." Rumors that Firestone plans to hire "Stomp" remain unsubstantiated.)

Intel is a strange company. Before the Pentium, manufacturers of computer chips were anonymous vendors to the companies that built the machines. You bought an IBM or a Compaq, not a 486 processor. Intel struck out into the wilderness of turning a part into a consumer product, which was an interesting risk to take. Initially it was almost a disaster: the Pentium turned out to commit computational errors when required to juggle more than 5 decimal places. Because Intel had made Pentium a brand name, Intel had a public relations problem to deal with in addition to a technical problem. But they weren't up to it.

This is important to understanding the Blue Guys, for Intel has a new problem. Computer sales are down, due in part to the present economic slowdown, but perhaps also due to market saturation. Over 51% of US households now have computers and are hooked up to the internet, and some analysts have claimed that everyone who wants to be online now is (by which they mean that everyone e-commerce companies want to be online now is). We've reached the crossroads of new technology: the only way to expand the market profitably is to make this luxury technology a necessary technology. The American automobile industry was built on this tactic.

But until that happens, the only way to remain profitable is to sell people second and third computers, and the only way to do that is to convince them to trade up. Leaping up from Pentium to Pentium II to Pentium III is analogous to buying the new model with bigger tailfins.

Sure, you may have made 1001 design changes that make your machine more reliable or safer, but most of us aren't strongly motivated by features we can't brag about. "Pentium III" needs to sound like a step up. But in order to sound like it, Intel has to sell it, and has to sell us on spending more money, now, when the stock market is bouncing off the walls and we don't know whether Dumb or Dumber will be the next President.

Why the Blue Guys would help is hard to say. Call it desperation, call it a shot in the dark. Once again, the Intel people have been caught with their pants down.