OUTCOME OF THE YOU + HP CAMPAIGN

‘‘You + HP’’ was widely acknowledged as a key contributor to the ongoing transformation of the company’s image from, as Advertising Age put it, ‘‘well-regarded though stodgy into a brand akin to sexier rivals such as Sony Corp.’’ For the print insert that launched the campaign, which ‘‘cut through in a medium that HP’s rivals have dominated for decades,’’ Goodby was awarded Adweek ’s Media Plan of the Year for Best Use of Magazines. Goodby’s market research indicated that the inserts raised consumers’ likelihood to buy HP digitalimaging products by 8 percent. The 2004 television spots generated, according to Goodby and HP, more consumer feedback than either had ever gotten from an ad, and Adweek named ‘‘You + HP’’ its Campaign of the Year for 2004. TV Guide ’s praise went beyond the realm of advertising, claiming that the spot ‘‘Picture Book’’ was the best 60 seconds of television then on the air. In 2004 HP extended the ‘‘You + HP’’ concept to digital music, partnering with Apple to sell HP-branded iPods and offering iTunes software on its PCs. The iPod, an MP3 player that allowed consumers to mix and match music to suit their personalities, offered HP a further vehicle for connecting the personal-expression ethos to its brand image. A business-to-business campaign called ‘‘Change + HP’’ was likewise launched in 2004, using the company’s new cutting-edge image to appeal to information-technology decision makers in the rapidly evolving tech marketplace. ‘‘You + HP,’’ along with the umbrella ‘‘+ HP’’ idea and HP’s image, continued to evolve through 2005. Whether HP’s change in direction was a welcome one remained an open question, however, at least to the company’s board of directors. Fiorina was ousted as chief executive officer in February 2005.

MARKETING STRATEGY OF THE YOU + HP CAMPAIGN

‘‘You + HP’’ was launched with a 20-page print insert in the October 2, 2003, edition of USA Today. The idea of spending $10 million on such an insert, designed to run in about a dozen publications, went against the grain of traditional print advertising for photography brands, which tended to focus on maximum coverage and frequency. Because the campaign was ‘‘more lifestyleoriented than anything else,’’ as Berg told Adweek, the company ‘‘had to find a way to stand out in unique environments’’ rather than take a blanket approach to print placement. Goodby’s creative team decided that the magazines in which the insert would appear after its launch should be ones whose editorial focus celebrated the power of photography; the team thus chose such titles as Vogue, the New Yorker, People, Entertainment Weekly, InStyle, ESPN: The Magazine, GQ, Travel + Leisure, and Conde´ Nast Traveler. The inserts put the consumer at the center of HP’s message, featuring the word ‘‘You’’ in a prominent position on nearly every page, employing vibrant photo collages and statements such as ‘‘You are a point-and-shoot revolutionary with an itchy shutter finger’’ and ‘‘You are the Van Gogh of pic files.’’ The ads featured the full range of HP digital-imaging products, pointing out the brand’s coverage of the entire picture-making process but forgoing the usual listings of technical specifications.
The campaign’s initial television spots, directed by Vogel and shot in Barcelona, further underscored the revolutionary nature of digital-photography technology. In both ‘‘You’’ and ‘‘Statue,’’ people in social settings and on city streets were frozen in still frames suggesting photographs, while the scenes’ action moved on briskly and a continuous stream of individual moments were framed before dissolving back into motion. The fluidity of the movement from human interaction to still frame, along with the profusion of photographic possibilities suggested, communicated the limitless options available to the digital-camera owner while dramatizing the integration of artistic expression and ordinary life. The arresting visual effects worked with the Cure’s moody 1989 hit song ‘‘Pictures of You’’ to create, as Adweek put it, ‘‘an emotional paean to digital photography.’’ In 2004 Goodby’s creative team planned a second series of television spots to be paired with the upbeat Kinks song ‘‘Picture Book.’’ This time the challenge was to go beyond illustrating picture-taking possibilities and find a visual method for dramatizing the ease of printing photos. In a test spot filmed as his bid to direct the new series, Vogel shot himself at his desk putting empty white frames around his head while coolly singing along to the Kinks song playing in the background. Vogel then tweaked the footage until it appeared that he was effortlessly creating a series of casual self-portraits from thin air. Not only did this test ad get him the job, but it was reshot with little alteration as the 30-second spot ‘‘Franc¸ois.’’ In the spot ‘‘Picture Book’’ the principle of picking photographs out of thin air was applied to crowds of people. At the start of the commercial, two rows of people held frames to their faces, after which the frames became pictures, and then the people traded these self-portraits with one another. In ‘‘Relay’’ the photographic frame was passed like a baton between groups and individuals. Photos transformed into dynamic real-life scenes and vice versa as the frame made its way through a hypnotic flux of distinctive people and moments.

COMPETITION OF THE YOU + HP CAMPAIGN

Given its sprawling portfolio HP competed with a wide range of companies, but its ‘‘You + HP’’ campaign, while leveraging and further establishing its overall brand identity, directly pitted the company against other digitalcamera manufacturers. At the time of the campaign it was number six among digital-camera vendors in the United States, well behind segment leaders Eastman Kodak Company and Sony Corporation. Kodak’s success, according to Advertising Age, was chiefly attributable to its ‘‘century-long simple stance that Kodak equals pictures.’’ Though hampered somewhat by losses in the rapidly diminishing film-photography side of its business, Kodak could claim, like HP, to offer simple solutions to the entire picture-making process, especially as PCs became unnecessary for printing. Kodak had the industry-leading photo printer as well as the industry-leading online printing and storage site (called the Kodak EasyShare Gallery), and it had kiosks at major retail stores, such as Wal-Mart and CVS, that allowed consumers yet another outlet for printing pictures. Kodak’s digital-imaging ads therefore focused on ease of use while reinforcing the company’s history of photographic excellence.
Sony likewise made appeals to consumers based on its legacy, but that legacy was one of ‘‘quality technology and cutting-edge design,’’ according to Advertising Age, rather than one of film photography. This image merged neatly with the company’s digital-imaging marketing efforts, which drew attention to the convenient size and sleekness of Sony cameras. In 2005 Sony reinforced its image by unveiling the tagline ‘‘WorryFree Digital Products,’’ orchestrating a marketing push with partner retailers to head off the concerns of first-time digitalcamera buyers and assure them that its products were simple and easy to use.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF THE YOU + HP CAMPAIGN

HP had a storied history of innovation and was a Fortune 100 company when Carly Fiorina took over as chief executive officer in 1999. Though the company was well known for its quality products and particularly for its printers, ‘‘it had become clear,’’ according to Advertising Age, ‘‘that HP had to do something to change its consumer image.’’ HP’s takeover of its rival Compaq in 2002—at a time when PC sales (the heart of Compaq’s business) were abysmal—raised further questions about the company’s direction in the precarious postbubble marketplace. Fiorina and Allison Johnson, HP’s senior vice president for global brand and communications, asked agency Goodby, Silverstein & Partners to answer these questions by showcasing the merger itself and then by focusing on other high-profile but previously unpublicized HP partnerships in a large-scale rebranding push that broke in the fall of 2002.
Ads touting the merger used an ‘‘HP + Compaq’’ graphic to show the strength of the partnership, and the ‘‘+’’ sign was then used as a unifying visual symbol in the larger branding campaign, which extolled HP’s contributions to an impressive array of corporate and institutional partners. The campaign was launched with ‘‘Anthem,’’ a television spot that, as Creativity magazine noted, ‘‘linked HP technology to bigger and cooler things—Dreamworks’ imagemaking, FedEx’s efficiency, BMW’s Formula 1 need for speed.’’ Other memorable ads were ‘‘Restore,’’ which brought figures from a Dutch master painting to life in order to illustrate the role HP played in restoring art for London’s National Gallery, and ‘‘The Next Shift,’’ which featured iconic toys—Slinky, Elmo, Spiderman, and others—commuting to work in Manhattan as a way of illustrating HP’s involvement in keeping Toys ‘‘R’’ Us stores stocked and ready for business. Creativity selected Goodby’s HP branding work as its campaign of the year for 2003, arguing that the spots had worked together to ‘‘render formerly square HP a magnetic new personality.’’
Meanwhile the rapid rise in popularity of digital cameras presented one of the few bright spots in the dismal technology sectors of the struggling American economy. As the 2003 holiday season approached, digital cameras were poised to overtake traditional cameras in yearly sales for the first time. Though HP was not known for its cameras, its wide portfolio of products meant that it was positioned to offer consumers an integrated system for home digital photography.

OVERVIEW OF THE YOU + HP CAMPAIGN

Long known as a reliable but predictable maker of computer printers, Hewlett-Packard Company (HP) was, in 2003, engaged in a recasting of its moribund image, a project initiated by HP’s chief executive officer, Carly Fiorina, after a divisive 2002 merger with computer company Compaq. That year HP unveiled its most ambitious consumer advertising campaign ever. The new campaign, called ‘‘You + HP,’’ featured HP’s digital cameras and imaging products, a segment of the Fortune 100 company’s operations that was seen as a major growth opportunity.
‘‘You + HP’’ supplemented an ongoing enterprise campaign that had introduced the ‘‘+’’ graphic as a means of showcasing HP’s partnerships with other companies and institutions and that further positioned the old-line company as a forward-looking, glamorous company in tune with twenty-first-century lifestyles. Developed by HP’s main U.S. advertising agency, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners of San Francisco, the campaign broke in October 2003 with the risky use of 20-page print inserts, first in USA Today and later in trendsetting magazines, and went on to feature some of the most talked-about television spots of the time. Directed by Franc¸ois Vogel, the television spots dramatized the digital-photography revolution with visuals integrating still frames and live action, while catchy pop music by the Cure (in the campaign’s first year) and the Kinks (in the second year) played as the spots’ sound track.
The print and television portions of ‘‘You + HP’’ were well received by industry commentators as well as the general public, and the campaign was credited with effectively updating HP’s image for a new generation of consumers. The campaign continued to evolve, and the company’s broader marketing efforts kept the ‘‘+ HP’’ idea as their starting point. HP’s change in direction, however, was not welcomed by all; the company’s board of directors ousted Fiorina in 2005.

OUTCOME OF THE EXPANDING POSSIBILITIES CAMPAIGN

Independent research showed that the ads were successful in changing the perceptions of consumers. According to Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, studies showed that the ads had helped Hewlett-Packard come to be perceived as a company that ‘‘empowers people to ‘make exciting things happen.’ ’’ People’s awareness that Hewlett-Packard made more than just printers also increased. In March 1998 the Business Journal of San Jose reported that Hewlett-Packard led the market as the top seller of workstations running off Microsoft Windows. It sold nearly 155,000 Windows-based workstations, or 42 percent of the market, in 1997. The journal attributed part of Hewlett-Packard’s success to the ‘‘Expanding Possibilities’’ campaign.
The original three ‘‘Expanding Possibilities’’ spots won two Icon Awards, and ‘‘Buck’’ won a silver Clio.

MARKETING STRATEGY OF THE EXPANDING POSSIBILITIES CAMPAIGN

To demonstrate the excitement of its new campaign, Hewlett-Packard hosted a gala announcement event in San Francisco on November 11, 1997. At the kickoff event Hewlett-Packard chairman Platt described the company’s image as ‘‘a lab coat that was empty.’’ The company had excelled at engineering prowess but never at savvy self-promotion. The new campaign aimed to add to the company’s strengths a new spirit of excitement, creativity, and innovation. Along with the new advertising, Hewlett-Packard introduced new product packaging, in-store merchandising, and vending machines for its ink-jet printer supplies.
The introduction of the ‘‘Expanding Possibilities’’ campaign meant dropping Goodby, Silverstein & Partners’ award-winning campaign that used the tag line ‘‘Built by engineers. Used by normal people.’’ One reason for the switch was to dispel the notion that the company was dominated by engineers. ‘‘The consumer brand strategy and advertising campaign aim to make the HP brand more relevant to consumers by revealing the company’s dynamic side and dispelling the idea that HP is only a printer company,’’ said the firm’s Antonio Perez. ‘‘People used to say HP was a great stealth marketer,’’ said Jill Kramer, the company’s marketing communications manager, in Adweek. ‘‘There’s been growing recognition with HP that our brand is truly an asset and that is something we should be investing in. We are becoming more visible and more aggressive.’’ Part of the reason for a move toward consumers was the rapid pace of change. With technology and products evolving so quickly, consumers were easily confused and often felt behind the times. Executives at Hewlett-Packard felt that a finely honed brand identity might attract consumers looking for a guide through the digital and technology jungle. In addition, the company recognized that the market for traditional business products was expanding to include in-home and consumer use. Lower-cost, higher-quality printers, scanners, and all-inone machines made the products attractive outside the typical corporate or business setting. The campaign also called attention to Hewlett-Packard’s Internet products, something it had been producing for years but had never promoted to the public.
Hewlett-Packard sometimes referred to the new campaign as ‘‘the real life campaign’’ because the strategy was to shine the spotlight on people not usually associated with technology. Grandparents and children were highlighted, and they shared their stories in their own words. The intent was not just to show what people could do with Hewlett-Packard products but also to demonstrate what the products could help people achieve. Hewlett-Packard products were presented as engines for consumers’ creative thinking. Although Hewlett-Packard wanted to change its image with the ‘‘Expanding Possibilities’’ campaign, there were certain elements in its marketing effort and image that were retained. The company logo and the display of the Hewlett-Packard name with the logo remained the same. The company also maintained continuity with its advertising agencies. Goodby, Silverstein & Partners continued handling the ads for Hewlett-Packard printers and scanners and for the company’s other computer equipment. Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising continued the advertising for the company’s Pavilion line of personal computers, and Winkler Advertising continued to create the company’s ads for laser printer supplies.

COMPETITION OF THE EXPANDING POSSIBILITIES CAMPAIGN

In 1997 and 1998 the consumer demand for sub-$1,000 computers continued to erode profit margins throughout the industry. Many major computer manufacturers responded by going after small and medium-sized businesses and by launching large-scale e-business ventures. The top marketers supported these moves with glossy multi-million-dollar brand advertising campaigns. IBM made the first and most dramatic move in this direction with a $130 million e-business initiative that targeted businesses using the Internet.
Among Hewlett-Packard’s other competitors were Compaq, Dell, and Apple. Compaq spent some $102 million on advertising in 1997 and planned to double the amount in 1998, when it launched its first global brand campaign. Dell spent $43 million on ads in 1997 and planned to double the amount in 1998 to brand itself as the originator and leader in selling directly to the consumer and in providing technical support services to its customers. Apple spent $47 million on its ‘‘Think Different’’ campaign, which aimed to link the company’s computers with Einstein, Picasso, and other creative people.

TARGET MARKET OF THE EXPANDING POSSIBILITIES CAMPAIGN

The primary target of the initial ‘‘Expanding Possibilities’’ ads was families with children, but the company also wanted to become better known among small businesses, microbusinesses, and the owners of home businesses. Both business owners and workers were targeted. In Canada, Hewlett-Packard made a direct appeal to entrepreneurs and the self-employed. According to Statistics Canada, the latter group numbered 1.8 million, up 28 percent from 1991 to 1998.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF THE EXPANDING POSSIBILITIES CAMPAIGN

Two Stanford University engineers, William Hewlett and David Packard, founded the company with $538 in a Palo Alto garage in 1939. Their first major customer, Walt Disney, bought oscillators to help make his film Fantasia. In the 1970s and 1980s Hewlett-Packard became known as an entrepreneurial high-tech company, and it has been credited with establishing Silicon Valley. For years it made the lists of America’s best-managed companies. By the late 1980s, however, the company seemed entrapped in a bureaucratic jungle, with burdensome decision making by consensus and other organizational problems. In 1990 Hewlett-Packard was reorganized, and cost-cutting measures included voluntary severance and early-retirement programs. The company’s single sales force was divided by product lines, and administrative and manufacturing areas were consolidated.
During its history Hewlett-Packard had always been much better known in the business community than among general consumers. It was the world’s second largest computer supplier and a leading provider of electronic products and systems for computing, measurement, and communications. But it did not use advertising to appeal directly to consumers. Lewis Platt, then the chairman, president, and CEO of Hewlett-Packard, said that 18 months of focus group testing showed that the public felt the company to be trustworthy and reliable but did not view it as innovative. Hewlett-Packard’s reputation stemmed from its engineeringdominated culture, and while people judged its products to be of high quality, they perceived the company as being technical and impersonal.
In addition, the company’s decentralized structure contributed to its fragmented marketing efforts and prevented it from taking full advantage of consumer interactions. For example, the owners of Hewlett-Packard’s 75 million ink-jet printers bought from two to five new cartridges a year, but the company did not have a plan to take advantage of these customer contacts. Hewlett-Packard’s vision of the future included a blending of consumer electronics, including PCs and communications and entertainment products, with new product categories emerging. The company’s goal was to prepare to become the largest consumer electronics supplier by the early 2000s. This would mean becoming much better known among consumers. As the technology battleground moved into the home, however, Hewlett-Packard had to prepare to compete with electronics and entertainment companies such as Sony and General Electric that already had a much higher profile with consumers and that were viewed in more positive terms.

OVERVIEW OF THE EXPANDING POSSIBILITIES CAMPAIGN

Although it was widely known and respected in the business world for its solid engineering and reliable products, Hewlett-Packard, a huge company with 121,900 employees and revenues of $42.9 billion in 1997, found itself relatively unknown to the general public. Beginning in the late 1990s, Hewlett-Packard sought to expand its presence in the consumer market. To do so, the company initiated a $75 million consumer brand strategy that included an advertising campaign called ‘‘Expanding Possibilities.’’ It was the first time in Hewlett-Packard’s 60-year history that it had tried to shed its reputation as an engineering and business firm for a more consumeroriented image. In 1997 the consumer business accounted for only a quarter of Hewlett-Packard’s revenue, but the company saw this segment as being the place where growth would come most rapidly. As the general public became more focused on technology, Hewlett-Packard wanted to have a more prominent place in the consumer’s mind.
The ‘‘Expanding Possibilities’’ campaign first appeared in the United States on November 11, 1997, in the form of three television spots that featured color printing applications people could employ in everyday situations. The ads ran through January 1998. They were aired in prime time on CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN, A&E, and the Discovery Channel. In Canada the spots ran on the Hockey Night, Bravo!, Showcase, Discover, and Life Network channels. Goodby, Silverstein & Partners of San Francisco created the spots. The original ‘‘Expanding Possibilities’’ campaign was budgeted at $15 million for the United States and at $40 million globally.
The ‘‘Mason’’ spot showed a couple capturing their newborn baby’s wrinkled image on a Hewlett-Packard digital camera. The father downloaded the image onto a Hewlett-Packard computer, created a birth announcement, and E-mailed it to relatives. ‘‘Herta’’ featured a grandmother who took family photographs off the wall, scanned them into her Hewlett-Packard PC, and made a family history book for her children and grandchildren. ‘‘Buck’’ centered on a former Negro Leagues baseball player, Buck O’Neil, and a young friend who created their own baseball cards with O’Neil’s Hewlett-Packard scanner, PC, and printer and then sold them on the Internet.
In March 1998 Hewlett-Packard added a $12 million brand campaign with two more television spots and a print element, all created by Saatchi & Saatchi of San Francisco. The two 30-second spots ran during sports and news programs in the company’s top 10 regional markets in the United States. The schedule later included national exposure on CNN, ESPN, the Discovery Channel, and the Learning Channel. This round of the campaign, unlike the original ads, was aimed toward businesses. In one spot, for example, an airline maintenance worker discovered that it would take five months to produce a revised manual telling workers not to remove the plug in a plane’s oil pan. As an alternative, he quickly updated the manual via the Internet. The print ads appeared in the Wall Street Journal for a month. A third group of ‘‘Expanding Possibilities’’ ads that were released in October 1998 used print media, on-line services, and radio to reach corporate customers, small businesses, home users, and students.

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

The ‘‘Built by Engineers, Used by Ordinary People’’ campaign was pronounced an unqualified success by the company. Post-campaign quantitative research showed that the campaign had been very effective in reaching the desired targets. Those assessments were confirmed by the number of awards the campaign won during 1996 and 1997.
At the ICON Awards, sponsored by Marketing Computers and Business Week to honor excellence in high technology marketing and advertising, ‘‘Built by Engineers’’ won 1996 Best of Show ICONs for ‘‘Babysitter,’’ ‘‘Room,’’ and ‘‘Mower’’; platinum in the best advertising campaign, broadcast category; and gold in the best advertising/television campaign category. At the international Clio Awards, which recognize excellence and creativity in consumer advertising, ‘‘Babysitter,’’ ‘‘Room,’’ and ‘‘Mower’’ won best national campaign certificates, and ‘‘Baby-sitter’’ was also a certificate winner. In addition, Adweek, which publishes an annual list of the 10 best spots of the year, declared ‘‘Baby-sitter’’ to be one of the best spots of 1996. The spots won other awards as well, both in local advertising industry shows, such as the San Francisco Show, and in New York-based shows, such as The One Show.
In Europe the campaign also won a Directors and Art Directors Silver Pencil Award in London for ‘‘Babysitter.’’ Finally, ‘‘Baby-sitter’’ won a Silver Lion at the Cannes Advertising Festival.
The Red Sky interactive ad also garnered acclaim, in this case from critics of Internet advertising. Microscope, a weekly online Web ad review magazine, rated the banner ad ‘‘a perfect 10’’ and called it ‘‘the most attentiongetting ad on the Web.’’ PC World followed suit, awarding it the number one position in PC World ’s Top 10 Advertiser Achievement Awards. The ad went on to win a Platinum Award in the 1997 Marketing Computers/Business Week ICON Award for the multimedia category.

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.