Current Issues in Marketing Strategy

I was recently contacted by Hewlett Packard to review their latest marketing roll out to support their new product the HP Officejet Pro 8500 printer. They sent me their online ad and a printer to trial. Interestingly, the printer was excellent, but their marketing strategy not so. To highlight this, I will compare it to the famous Kodak AIO, one of the best viral campaigns around.If you want to see the cartoon they were planning on running, click here. I can only assume that it has been scrapped, as last time I checked YouTube it had been removed. If you can be bothered watching it through, you will see that they are trying to attract the small/home office market. But the length and speed of it indicates that they just don't understand the Internet.

The printer itself is fantastic! It's wireless, scans, faxes & prints perfect pictures, it even has data insert points so you can plug your SD card directly into it. Yet with all these brilliant features, not one of them got a mention. Clearly they are proud of the fact is uses 50% of ink of its competitors, but even this didn't get a guernsey.

Contrast this viral ad from Kodak. It is very long, but hugely engaging and leaves the audience with clear brand values that they take away with them.

Josh Strawczynski's Opinion:
The Internet, particularly display advertising is about capturing the consumers imagination and imparting simple brand messages. The best advertising has a hook, be it viral, display or search, you need to understand your audience.

In my opinion a much better online strategy would have as simple PPC & Display ads encouraging people to find our more about this wonderful new office printer (possibly offer a prize) and then focus on a sharp landing page with actual user feedback. Integrating other social media like Twitter would have really given it an edge. Engage the potential customer and interact with them, that is Internet marketing in 2009.