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HP kicks off first ad campaign since Compaq merger
San Francisco, Nov 19: Hewlett-Packard, seeking to create a global brand that goes beyond its reputation as a computer and printer maker, on Monday launched a major advertising campaign, its first since buying Compaq Computer in May.
San Francisco, Nov 19: Hewlett-Packard, seeking to create a global brand that goes beyond its reputation as a computer and printer maker, on Monday launched a major advertising campaign, its first since buying Compaq Computer in May.
The worldwide campaign, on which analysts said HP could spend as much as $400 million, kicked off with 16-page inserts in newspapers and magazines and such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, The Economist, and Newsweek.
All the ads feature HP technology being used by customers and underline the company's ambition to become a one-stop shopping source for corporate information technology as the company takes on a growing rivalry with International Business Machines.
HP's Chief Executive, Carly Fiorina, used a keynote speech at the Comdex computer show on Monday in Las Vegas before an audience of thousands to unveil the campaign.
"Today we come with the capability to serve any institution and any customer," Fiorina said during her speech. "The merger has improved our market position because we can offer our customers more."
The brand campaign introduced the theme line — "everything is possible" — and emphasized Palo Alto, California-based HP's focus on partnering with its customers. "HP has got to be looking at the competitive landscape and targeting IBM," said Mark DiMassimo, head of New York-based DiMassimo Brand Advertising. "They're identifying their clients — the world's greatest large companies — and saying 'We're one of them.'"
In addition to newspapers and magazines, a series of television ads rolled out on Monday.
The first outdoor advertising appeared in New York's Times Square today and HP will take over premier placement on the Yahoo! Inc.'s Web site for the entire week, HP said. The ads began appearing in magazines this week, the company said. The word "invent" remains on the company logo, a change that Fiorina, highly regarded for her marketing savvy, made shortly after she came to HP in 1999 from Lucent Technologies, which she prepared for its 1996 spin-off from AT&T Corp.
Fiorina ultimately prevailed in a bitter proxy battle led by the heirs of HP's founders, who opposed the HP-Compaq merger on the grounds that it would saddle the company with a low-margin personal-computer business and dilute its strength in imaging and printing.
All three of the big computer-systems makers — IBM, Sun Microsystems Inc. and HP — are now putting forth their visions of how computing and information technology will be used by corporations, even as new investment on such equipment remains very limited.
"It's big, bold and aggressive — probably what they needed to re-emerge after the merger," John Lister, chairman of independent brand consultancy Lister Butler, said of the campaign.
At least one analyst, however, was not sold on the tagline unveiled with the campaign. Merrill Lynch analyst Steven Milunovich wrote in note to clients that he believed the tagline was a poor choice because of its generality, because it doesn't differentiate HP and because "users know everything is not possible."
Bureau Report
All the ads feature HP technology being used by customers and underline the company's ambition to become a one-stop shopping source for corporate information technology as the company takes on a growing rivalry with International Business Machines.
HP's Chief Executive, Carly Fiorina, used a keynote speech at the Comdex computer show on Monday in Las Vegas before an audience of thousands to unveil the campaign.
"Today we come with the capability to serve any institution and any customer," Fiorina said during her speech. "The merger has improved our market position because we can offer our customers more."
The brand campaign introduced the theme line — "everything is possible" — and emphasized Palo Alto, California-based HP's focus on partnering with its customers. "HP has got to be looking at the competitive landscape and targeting IBM," said Mark DiMassimo, head of New York-based DiMassimo Brand Advertising. "They're identifying their clients — the world's greatest large companies — and saying 'We're one of them.'"
In addition to newspapers and magazines, a series of television ads rolled out on Monday.
The first outdoor advertising appeared in New York's Times Square today and HP will take over premier placement on the Yahoo! Inc.'s Web site for the entire week, HP said. The ads began appearing in magazines this week, the company said. The word "invent" remains on the company logo, a change that Fiorina, highly regarded for her marketing savvy, made shortly after she came to HP in 1999 from Lucent Technologies, which she prepared for its 1996 spin-off from AT&T Corp.
Fiorina ultimately prevailed in a bitter proxy battle led by the heirs of HP's founders, who opposed the HP-Compaq merger on the grounds that it would saddle the company with a low-margin personal-computer business and dilute its strength in imaging and printing.
All three of the big computer-systems makers — IBM, Sun Microsystems Inc. and HP — are now putting forth their visions of how computing and information technology will be used by corporations, even as new investment on such equipment remains very limited.
"It's big, bold and aggressive — probably what they needed to re-emerge after the merger," John Lister, chairman of independent brand consultancy Lister Butler, said of the campaign.
At least one analyst, however, was not sold on the tagline unveiled with the campaign. Merrill Lynch analyst Steven Milunovich wrote in note to clients that he believed the tagline was a poor choice because of its generality, because it doesn't differentiate HP and because "users know everything is not possible."
Bureau Report