HP Unveils 'Demand More' Campaign

Hewlett-Packard announced on Monday it would launch an ad campaign to push its “Adaptive Enterprise” strategy, which targets IBM’s similar “On Demand” initiative.

The campaign, with the tagline “Demand More,” targets the top executives of HP’s largest customers, pushing the message that the Palo Alto, Calif.-based tech giant’s technology gives them the flexibility and reliability they need in an ever-changing technology world.

The campaign could account for as much as $100 million of the companys $400 million “Everything is possible” push, unveiled in November to liven up its brand image by showing the diverse uses of HP’s technology.

The “Demand More” will feature vignettes of chief information officers talking about the challenges facing them today and the tools they need to meet them. HP’s agency of record for brand advertising, Omnicom’s Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, designed the campaign.

For example, a six-page print insert titled “Confessions of the World’s Most Demanding CIOs,” features technology executives from HP customers Sprint, Dreamworks and Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce relating how HP made their technology processes more flexible and efficient. The insert ran in The Wall Street Journal on Monday. The ads push customers to HP’s “Demand More” Web site.

HP chose the first anniversary of its $19 billion merger with Compaq to launch the initiative, which it said was developed out of HP’s experience of combining the infrastructure of the two companies. HP CEO Carly Fiorina said HP saved $1.3 billion so far through supply chain integration.

“This is what we mean by ‘Demand more,'” Fiorina said. “We think its time for our customers to demand more from IT.”

Fiorina made no disguise of the target of the campaign, saying IT integration challenges are not about binoculars and pixie dust — two images from IBM’s “On Demand” television commercials — that need an army of consultants to solve them.

“We don’t think the way to solve complex technology problems is to throw more people at them,” she said.

IBM’s $700 to $800 million campaign rolled out last October. It has a light-hearted approach that contrasts the company’s proactive enterprise computing applications with a “business time machine” that allows companies to correct past missteps.

HP countered the following month with its own campaign, taking a different tack by showing concrete, real world examples of HP’s technology at work. The ad push features everyday people and businesses and how they use HP technology to accomplish their goals. The first campaign ads highlight NASA using the company’s technology on the space shuttle; DreamWorks creating animation with HP; and Finnish bird watchers using HP to track the position of rare birds.