"Let's Do Amazing" Says H-P In New Branding Campaign

In pre-recession days, branding was a big deal for technology companies. Splashy, lavish marketing campaigns were used to tout a tech brand's key attributes and get consumers to take notice. Those days are gone, but now H-P (Hewlett-Packard) is bringing back the glitz with a new eight-week, $40 million ad campaign – its first in more than five years.

The new branding campaign, "Let's Do Amazing," breaks this weekend and will run on high-profile television shows, such as the NCAA March Madness basketball tournament on CBS. The ads sport a slick dimensionalized version of H-P's staid logo, and the campaign has a hip, humorous tone.

In the television spots, quirky comedian Rhys Darby seeks out places where customers are doing amazing things with H-P technology. The ads range from the business side (Darby interviews a UPS guy using a high-tech robotic device) to the consumer side (Darby interrupts Dr. Dre during a music recording session). TV ads will be accompanied by print, radio, and online promotions.

The H-P campaign is designed to demonstrate that the company is a lot more than a maker of computer printers -- a commonly held assumption. In fact, H-P is a computer technology giant that has diversified by acquiring firms like 3Com, a networking company, and EDS, a computer services company. It's also a growing, vibrant and successful company. H-P just reported results for its first quarter of the fiscal year, ending January 31, 2010, and the news was all good: Net revenue of over $31 billion for the quarter was up 8 percent over the prior year, with operating profit up about 20 percent. The printer division accounted for only 20 percent of the company's revenue.

Glenna Patton, H-P's vice president of brand strategy, says that, despite studies showing H-P stands for "reliability" and "quality," the H-P brand simply doesn't have "a real differentiation in personality and distinction." Maybe Dr. Dre and 40 million bucks will help change that perception.