Before the “Intel Inside” campaign, Intel had been largely unknown to consumers. The company had a reputation for its technical prowess and quality among original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), but it had not seen much need to cultivate a similar renown among end users. That began to change in the late 1980s — the PC market was creating a huge demand for central processing units, and with that came a new imperative for Intel to explain the desirability of its products to lay consumers. Intel’s response to that imperative, the Intel Inside campaign, would make advertising history, turn Intel into a household brand name and create a valuable shortcut through which OEMs could signal the quality of their products to customers.