H-P Launches $125 Million Campaign

Hewlett-Packard Co. unleashed a $125 million integrated ad campaign to bolster its share of the market for color printers.

H-P said it will spend $25 million more than it spent in the past year on printer advertising, and will focus on radio, the Internet and print ads in major newspapers such as the New York Times. The ads will tout H-P’s “Expanding Possibilities” theme.

Palo Alto, CA-based H-P is battling to keep its lead in different areas of the printer market. Rivals such as Xerox Corp. have been unveiling new products to try to eat into the $3.8 billion U.S. market for color ink-jet printers, Bloomberg News said.

In the Internet campaign, Web sites from America Online Inc. to ESPN to Dilbert.com will load into a user’s browser in black and white, then wipe to color. The U.S. portion of the campaign begins Thursday with newspaper ads and radio spots. Internet ads will appear in November and December, H-P said.