With the spotlight on its Imaging & Printing Group (IPG), HP, together with creative agency Goodby has launched a $300 million global integrated marketing campaign with the theme "What do you have to say?" As part of an overall effort to push the Print 2.0 movement, which merges the online and print worlds, the computer brand enlisted singer/designer Gwen Stefani, Burton Snowboards founder Jake Burton and graphic design pioneer and Pentagram partner Paula Scher to lend their unique style and design savvy to a series of web-friendly experiences that explore the multiple dimensions and uses of printed matter.
"The idea behind the whole campaign is to change people's behavior and give them new ideas on what to print," explains Margaret Johnson, creative director at Goodby. "Rather than just printing out Word documents and things you typically do at home, we want to broaden people's horizons."
Stefani's microsite, for example, features a create-your-own Harajuku-styled avatar function, original, printable illustrations drawn by the pop star, as well as a purchasable Sweet Escape Tour scrapbook that includes Gwen's personal photos and a section to upload you own pics and captions. Scher's component, meanwhile, includes a video interview along with her handiwork on five succinctly-named brand identity templates--Bold, Modern, Edgy, Elegant and Friendly-- that include letterhead, envelopes, business cards and notecards.
For Goodby art director Pete Conolly, the print 2.0 push invites a more colorful interpretation. "You can tell a lot about someone by the images that they interact with throughout their lives," he says. "If you look at someone's album or the images that they've printed, you get a very good sense of who they are. We had this idea of people walking around life with almost a stream of images that get created on-the-fly and then disappear after a short distance. So it's almost like a jet stream that's constantly following them that represents their interaction with images."
HP has leveraged several channels to promote "What do you have to say?," including TV, out-of-home, mobile WAP, viral, social networking sites and banners. With next-gen printing capabilities at its core, HP hopes to make printing from the web easier, expand its digital content creation and publishing platforms across all demos as well as delivering a streamlined digital printing platform that increases speeds and alleviates high costs for high-volume markets.
Along with the web component, the outdoor portion, which includes an interactive Gwen Stefani billboard in New York's Times Square, is currently live, with TV spots featuring Stefani and Burton set to premiere on September 6th.