MARKETING STRATEGY OF THE “BUILT BY ENGINEERS, USED BY ORDINARY PEOPLE” CAMPAIGN

The Hewlett-Packard advertising account had been held since 1988 by Saatchi & Saatchi in San Francisco, but the company decided against asking them to carry out the new campaign. According to the San Jose Business Journal, this was partially because of a 1995 print campaign that cost more than $30 million but failed to leave any lasting impression on consumers. Arlene King, peripherals-advertising manager at Hewlett-Packard, had another explanation for the move. ‘‘We wanted to get more visible advertising than we did in the past. We had been with Saatchi for eight years and we were becoming too alike.’’ In May 1996 HP chose Goodby Silverstein & Partners in San Francisco to head the $40 million printer advertising account (Saatchi did, however, retain the PC portion of the Hewlett-Packard account). Goodby Silverstein & Partners had previously been known for creative and popular campaigns such as the ‘‘Got Milk?’’ ads for the California Milk Processor Board.
In consumer research, Goodby Silverstein found that most people associated Hewlett-Packard with technical strength and reliability. Therefore, the new campaign needed to link Hewlett-Packard’s heritage as an engineering company and its reputation for building reliable products with the usefulness of HP products in ‘‘ordinary’’ situations. In short, the challenge was to humanize the face of technical prowess by giving complicated engineering a human face.
The $10.5 million Goodby Silverstein campaign for Hewlett-Packard, ‘‘Built by Engineers, Used by Ordinary People,’’ solved the dilemma by poking gentle fun at its own engineers while illustrating the excellence of HP products, particularly the 693 DeskJet printer, for use in the home, and the LaserJet 5si Mopier (multiple originals copier), a network printer for large-scale commercial use.
The year-long campaign was two-pronged, targeting both individual consumers and corporate entities. It featured television spots that ran from late November 1996 through late February 1997 on CNN and national networks. Those were supplemented by print ads in publications like Newsweek, the Wall Street Journal, Business Week, Fortune, PC Magazine, PC Week, and PC Computing that ran beyond the close of the television segment. In addition, the San Francisco-based interactive ad agency Red Sky developed an interactive ad that could be viewed on the Internet though the end of February 1997.
The Goodby Silverstein television spots showed both the ordinary and the extraordinary uses to which Hewlett-Packard printers can be put. In ‘‘Mower,’’ the first of the ‘‘corporate side ads,’’ a nerdy-looking announcer sporting a bow tie lists what a Mopier can do (print, staple, collate) and then jokes that the only thing it cannot do is mow the lawn. That serves as enough of a challenge to HP engineers, who immediately begin reconfiguring the printer. In the next scene the Mopier is turned on its side charging around an overgrown field, having been transformed by the company’s engineers into a lawnmower.
In a second spot, ‘‘Translation,’’ the interviewer asks an HP engineer to explain exactly how a Mopier works. The engineer answers in highly technical jargon, which is translated for the layperson in a running voice-over. In both of these spots the engineers were actual Hewlett-Packard employees.
In the consumer-oriented spots, the usefulness of HP products in personal situations was demonstrated. In the ‘‘Baby-sitter’’ spot, an elderly man babysitting his infant granddaughter panics when she wakes up and begins to cry for her mother. Suddenly he has a brilliant idea: he grabs a picture of the mother and turns on his DeskJet printer. When the mother returns, she sees the grandfather—with a color print of the mother pasted on his face—holding the peacefully sleeping baby. In a similar ad (‘‘Room’’), a teenager whose mother checks up on him through the key hole on his bedroom door fools her into thinking he has finally cleaned his extremely messy room by making a color printout of a picture of the room in a pristine state and positioning it just beyond the key hole.
The interactive ad developed by Red Sky was an extension of the television and print campaign into the electronic medium. It carried on the playfulness of the television spots but was also very different, using as it did the interactive capabilities of online advertising. As Joel Hladecek, Red Sky’s chief creative director, told the San Francisco Business Times, ‘‘There are two rules of advertising in this medium. The audience has the ability to choose what it’s interested in, and people will avoid advertising if they can.’’
Red Sky responded by burying the advertising message within entertainment. Their 1997 Pong advertising banner for Hewlett-Packard, promoting the LaserJet Mopier, played off the print and television tag line. Viewers used Shockwave technology to play games of Pong with an engineer named Jerry. They were initially drawn to the ad by the familiar sound of a ping-pong game. They then discovered that the ad was more than just a banner: it was an interactive game in which they could use their mouse to actually play along. The ad ran through February 1997 at various sites.

COMPETITION OF THE “BUILT BY ENGINEERS, USED BY ORDINARY PEOPLE” CAMPAIGN

Although Hewlett-Packard remained the market leader for printers, its largest competitors—Canon, Xerox, and Lexmark—were making strenuous efforts to narrow the gap. Also, as high technology moved into people’s living rooms, the company saw that other makers of computers and electronic goods—such as Microsoft and Apple, among others—had been able to position themselves as interesting and cutting edge while Hewlett-Packard was viewed by consumers as reliable but stodgy. Canon, the giant Japanese maker of business machines, cameras, and other optical products, presented a formidable challenge to Hewlett-Packard with its line of laser and BubbleJet printers. Marketing its products under the tag line ‘‘You can with a Canon,’’ the company experienced strong growth in its printers during 1997. Canon targeted businesses with such products as the Digital GP215, a multifunctional digital device for networked workgroups that printed, faxed, copied, and scanned. The company also introduced the MultiPASS L90, another multifunctional system, and a new color laser printer, the CLBP 360PS. The BubbleJet continued to defend its market share with a very small and light personal model, the BJC-50, weighing only 900 grams. Xerox Corporation, which introduced the first (manually operated) commercial xerographic product in 1949 and the first automatic office copier in 1959, made its first laser printer in 1977 and by 1991 was developing an extensive printer line. To highlight the company’s evolution from copy machines to a wide range of business products, Xerox in 1994 adopted the tag line ‘‘The Document Company, Xerox’’ as its new corporate signature. As a document company, Xerox in 1997 introduced an array of specialized printer products for business, including a color printer for signs, banners, and billboards; a printer designed specifically for engineering needs; and the Xerox Productivity Centre System, which allowed users to scan, store, manage, electronically collate, distribute, print, and copy wide-format documents such as those used by architects, mapmakers, and graphic artists. Lexmark brought up the rear in this august assemblage, but it was able to chip away at the other companies’ lead during 1997. Lexmark, based in Lexington, Kentucky, was smaller than its competitors and had a narrower product range. It concentrated on laser, ink jet, and dot matrix printers and associated supplies that were comparable but lower-priced than Hewlett-Packard models. In November 1997 Lexmark won the first Annual Peripherals Excellence Award for network laser printers, beating out Hewlett-Packard and Apple.

TARGET MARKET OF THE “BUILT BY ENGINEERS, USED BY ORDINARY PEOPLE” CAMPAIGN

Although Hewlett-Packard held its position as the world’s leading supplier of hard-copy products (LaserJet and DeskJet printers, DesignJet large-format printers and plotters, ScanJet scanners, OfficeJet printer-fax-copiers, CopyJet color printer-copiers, and HP FAX facsimile machines), the company became concerned in 1996 that it projected an image too cold and technological for the home-electronics user to relate to. Since HP had a growing customer base of individual consumers, it decided to focus on making its technology seem more accessible.
The resulting television and print advertising in the ‘‘Built by Engineers, Used by Ordinary People’’ campaign targeted two audiences: families with children and business professionals, particularly corporate executives, management information system (MIS) experts, and end users. Creative elements were designed to appeal to low-end users while at the same time showing off the products’ high-tech features to viewers well versed in information technology.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF THE “BUILT BY ENGINEERS, USED BY ORDINARY PEOPLE” CAMPAIGN

Like many pioneering companies of the 20th century, Hewlett-Packard was born in a garage. It was founded by engineers David Packard and Bill Hewlett in 1938. At the time the mission was to develop and market a resistance-capacity audio oscillator that could be used to test sound equipment. Hewlett and Packard’s $538 in founding capital carried them through until the Walt Disney studios ordered eight of their devices. Then in 1941 the United States entered the Second World War, and an immediate overwhelming need for HP’s instruments was created. After the war ended, the company lost its mainstay government orders and decided to seek clients in the private sector. Hewlett-Packard introduced its measuring devices into the flourishing post-war electronics industry. In 1972 the company pioneered personal computing with the world’s first handheld scientific calculator, and it then went on to introduce the first desktop mainframe (in 1982) and the LaserJet printer (the first and most prominent of a line of printers for business and home), as well as copiers and scanners.

OVERVIEW OF THE “BUILT BY ENGINEERS, USED BY ORDINARY PEOPLE” CAMPAIGN

In early 1996 the Hewlett-Packard Company began to rethink its role in the electronics products industry. Undisputedly the market leader for printers and other electronic products, Hewlett-Packard (HP) nevertheless saw the competition at its heels. Even more important, as technology became more ‘‘personalized’’ and accessible to the average person, the company was not sure it could rely solely on its history as a purveyor of electronic goods to businesses and institutions.
Hewlett-Packard turned to the San Francisco advertising firm Goodby Silverstein & Partners to create an ad campaign that would give it a more human face and present it as a company responsive to the needs of its customers. Goodby Silverstein designed ‘‘Built by Engineers, Used by Ordinary People,’’ a campaign focusing on the new Mopier business printer and the 690 series of DeskJet printers for the home. The campaign, which ran from late 1996 until about the middle of 1997, was designed to appeal to both HP’s core customers—businesses—and to recreational or home users of electronics. The consumer ads showed people in situations that could easily be made simpler by the use of Hewlett-Packard products, while the business ads showed the imagination and flexibility of HP’s engineering capacity.

OUTCOME OF THE “THERE’S NO WRONG WAY TO EAT A REESE’S” CAMPAIGN

The effectiveness of the ‘‘There’s No Wrong Way to Eat a Reese’s’’ campaign was demonstrated in tracking and copy tests conducted by ad agency Ogilvy & Mather. ‘‘It’s run for almost ten years, and it’s a campaign that really worked. Consumers identify with it,’’ said Amy Robertson, an account executive with the agency. The tests showed that people remembered the advertisements, related to them, and associated them with the Reese’s brand.
With a growth rate of 5.4 percent, the retailconfectionery category was one of the most rapidly expanding food markets in the United States in 1997. Hershey had record net sales of about $4.3 billion, up from about $4 billion in 1996, and the company said that its candy business in North America was the chief contributor to the increase in earnings. At the end of 1997 Hershey was preparing a new television and print advertising campaign, coupons, and a sampling promotion to introduce another line extension, ReeseSticks wafer bars, in February 1998.
After a successful 15-year run, in 2002 the ‘‘There’s No Wrong Way to Eat a Reese’s’’ campaign was replaced. A new campaign created by Ogilvy & Mather had the theme and tagline ‘‘Get Lost in a Reese’s.’’ It targeted young men ages 18–24 who typically enjoyed candy on the run, but it also appealed to consumers in other age groups. In addition to the new campaign, to help the brand stay relevant to consumers the company updated its product packaging and introduced another line extension: FastBreak candy bars. ‘‘Get Lost in a Reese’s’’ supported the launch of FastBreak.

MARKETING STRATEGY OF THE “THERE’S NO WRONG WAY TO EAT A REESE’S” CAMPAIGN

Previous marketing had first stressed the two main ingredients of Reese’s—chocolate and peanut butter—as individual elements. Next, the combination of the two was emphasized. In 1987, however, the company’s research revealed that consumers could not replicate Reese’s by combining chocolate and peanut butter at home. The product’s unique taste was identified as a key selling point. In addition, the research showed that many consumers had peculiar ways of eating Reese’s peanut butter cups. The ‘‘There’s No Wrong Way to Eat a Reese’s’’ campaign featured the humor that consumers expected of the brand, and they were strongly focused on the product.
The first six commercials in the campaign began airing in 1988, and additional spots were released in waves. Five of them ran in 1997. The campaign initially consisted of television commercials and included print ads after 1994. One print advertisement showed a Reese’s peanut butter cup with four holes that made it look like a button. The caption read, ‘‘I make my own special alterations. (William Hamilton, Tailor).’’ In another print ad the candy had been nibbled into the shape of the United States. The caption said, ‘‘I start in Seattle and work my way around. (Miss Moore, Geography Teacher.)’’ A third showed a vampire leaving two fang marks where he had sucked the peanut-butter center out through the chocolate shell. The campaign featured a lively cast of additional characters, including a barber, a dragon, a secret agent, a private detective, a golfer, an Internal Revenue Service agent, a postal worker, and a mentalist. Television spots included one that began with an announcer saying, ‘‘How domino champ Charlie Armstrong eats a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup.’’ A drum roll accompanied a close-up of a little boy peering around a row of carefully balanced candy packages. To the sound of falling dominoes, the boy tipped over the first package, and the camera followed the rapidly falling Reese’s across the table until the last package flipped one piece of candy into the boy’s hand. The boy said, ‘‘Yeah.’’ Clapping and cheers were heard in the background. As the camera zoomed in on two peanut butter cups and their wrapper, the announcer concluded, ‘‘There’s no wrong way to eat a Reese’s.’’ Another began with an announcer saying, ‘‘How librarian Harriet Causbie eats a Reese’s peanut butter cup.’’ The words also appeared on the screen in gold letters against an orange and chocolate-brown background, the trademark colors of Reese’s candies. The scene then shifted to a library, where a serious woman in a gray suit sat at her desk. A sign over her head said, ‘‘Quiet please.’’ She held a piece of candy and shook her finger at the camera as she whispered, ‘‘I eat them as quietly as I can.’’ At that moment the sign fell with a crash, but she continued eating her candy. The commercial ended with a view of two peanut butter cups and their wrapper against an orange and brown background. A voice-over stated, ‘‘There’s no wrong way—Shhh—to eat a Reese’s.’’
In March 1997 Hershey began promoting a new product in the Reese’s line, Reese’s Crunchy Cookie Cups, with an estimated $10 million advertising campaign that appeared in print media and on television. Reese’s Crunchy Cookie Cups consisted of peanut butter, milk chocolate, and a chocolate cookie, which gave the product an interesting texture. In April the company distributed 50 million coupons and 8 million free samples of the new product. Later in the year the cookie cups were included in the ‘‘There’s No Wrong Way to Eat a Reese’s’’ campaign. Another line extension, the Reese’s Nutrageous candy bar, had been introduced in 1994. It received $9.5 million for advertising in 1995 and $5.4 million for the first six months of 1996. In comparison, the company spent $16.2 million to advertise regular and crunchy Reese’s peanut butter cups in 1995 and $9.2 million for the first six months of 1996.