AST Launches Brand-Name Status Campaign : Marketing: PC maker hopes ad firm’s efforts will help it to be recognized as an industry leader, not just a clone-maker competing on price alone.

Attempting to distinguish itself from competitors during a withering industry price war, AST Research Inc. on Monday launched its initial advertising campaign aimed at building brand-name awareness of its personal computers.

The campaign is AST’s first endeavor to be recognized as an industry leader, not just a so-called clone-maker that competes on price alone, said Mike Morand, AST’s vice president of marketing.

The “Product of Our Obsession” campaign is also the first result of AST’s decision in August to hire an outside advertising firm, El Segundo-based Team One Advertising. The campaign begins with magazine and newspaper ads this week and runs through June of next year.

“AST wants to focus on the proposition that we’re obsessed with building PCs,” Morand said. “We’re known for low prices. Our retailers told us that it was about time you guys got a little class.”

The ads, published this week in business and computer magazines and the Wall Street Journal, feature AST computers alongside a Harley Davidson motorcycle. The ads hawk the company’s culture as much as its products.

A subtitle reads: “Only an AST engineer would choose 200 megabytes over their 1200cc V-Twin,” suggesting that company engineers would rather design portable computers than play around on the open road.

Morand said the company isn’t spending more on advertising, which last year amounted to $21 million worldwide. But he said the company has redistributed its resources to pay for the campaign, eliminating its in-house staff that ran AST’s advertising for 12 years.

Morand said it would take about six to nine months to gauge the impact of the campaign on sales.

Gene Lu, chief executive of competitor Advanced Logic Research Inc. in Irvine, said he disagreed with AST’s new strategy.

“They’re trying to advertise a mystique,” he said. “In the midst of a budget crunch, we’re advertising value by focusing on price comparisons with our competition.”

Morand responded that AST computers will still carry low prices but that market research has shown that AST needs brand-name status especially during a market slowdown.

Team One’s Scott Gilbert agreed, saying: “There are right now so many industry players. There’s a shaking out going on, but it is still a faceless category for so many manufacturers.”

Gilbert is executive vice president and account director for Team One. The company is a subsidiary of ad industry giant Saatchi & Saatchi, which created Team One in 1989 to handle the advertising for Toyota’s luxury automobile division, the Lexus.