the setup
Ever since ATI was acquired by AMD, the Radeon brand has almost always been the challenger. AMD's offerings compete against a brand with significantly more market share, and Radeon had long carried a reputation for driver instability, even as that sentiment began to diverge from reality. With the release of RDNA 2 in 2020, consumers' perspective on the brand slowly began to change. Two years later, the RX 7000 Series represented a chance to further change that narrative.
the launch
The rollout happened in phases — the flagship products, the 7900 XTX and 7900 XT, were debuted on stage in Las Vegas by Dr. Lisa Su. The midrange 7700 XT and 7800 XT followed later. Each card in the family represented a different positioning challenge due to the customer they best served and their price-to-performance ratio against the competitor's offerings as well as previous generation Radeon cards.
Throughout the launch I worked cross-functionally with a smaller marketing team that spanned GTM, PMM, ISV, PR, community, and more. While there was traditional GTM and partner content that I helped execute on social, my ownership in the launch came through original social content and creative.
the role
For creative, I attended the Vegas launch and filmed and edited on-the-ground videos showing off the newly unveiled products. Additionally, for the second wave of releases, we partnered with a creative studio to get high quality b-roll which I planned and directed the capture of. These photos and images largely comprised beauty shots that would go on to be used and reused throughout the products' life cycles.
Following this, I concepted and created educational video content that helped get first time PC builders through the daunting first build experience, all using Radeon and Ryzen products. This extended to software walkthroughs, Q&A videos, and product family explainers to match consumers with the best options.
For copywriting and positioning, my editorial judgment came from spending time in the community every day. The GTM and PMM leads did amazing work on telling an overall competitive story, so I focused my efforts on areas I believed to be the easiest to gain market share. I worked directly from positioning documents and press decks, pulling out the two or three specs that best fit.
the positioning
RDNA 3 had several strengths that played well into a young, growing consumer base. While the halo products were less competitive in raw performance, the mid and low range offerings were arguably the leaders in price-to-performance. Additionally, the upscaling technology lagged behind the competitor.
Using this, I mapped my content back to the audience that fit our strengths. This profile included college to post grad age gamers, mostly focused on esports titles. My reasoning was straightforward: these consumers' spending ability fit into the product's price range, while the competition could be positioned as out of reach with a strong enough value proposition. Additionally, this audience mostly plays highly optimized, competitive games that do not require upscaling technology, which is often seen as a negative feature due to input latency. In other words, this audience craved raw frame generation at a reasonable price.
A big part of the ongoing narrative was telling the software story. Radeon's driver reputation was the elephant in the room, so we leaned into content around stability improvements and FSR 3 as it got integrated into new titles. Frequency was a powerful strategy here. The more we posted about driver updates, improvements, and publicly responded to customers with issues, the more customers associated the product with growing and robust support. The goal was to give the mid-market buyer a reason to feel confident.
Once the cards were on shelf, the real work started. Every morning began with Reddit threads and Twitter mentions — flagging issues, reposting customers waiting in line at Micro Center or showing off new builds, and directly messaging people who were experiencing driver bugs on new hardware. I asked for user-generated content outright and amplified it when it came in. On the partner side, we worked with AIB, retailer and SI partners — PowerColor, Newegg, Corsair, and dozens more — to cross-promote launch content and extend reach across the ecosystem.
the results
Launch content drove millions of video views, grew our graphics channels, and produced some of the highest-performing posts across the company's socials that year. Additionally, we saw an uptick in earned media, and anecdotally, a positive shift in sentiment across online spaces which still exists today for the RX 7000 Series.
More importantly, this was the first major launch I worked on in my first job out of college. In retrospect, starting my career working for the challenger was a privilege that taught me a lot about positioning and resource allocation. Every percentage point of market share was hard fought, and required resisting being defined by the competitor's product.
Following this launch, I was promoted to Senior Social Media Specialist within the year — a cumulative recognition of launch execution, community building, and pioneering short-form video strategy.