PCMAN – With the much-anticipated Star Wars seventh movie, Force Awakens, finally landing in theaters, an increased number of brands have been incorporating themselves into the iconic film franchise—surprisingly including HP.
Its latest ads featuring a Star Wars theme began with a young man in his garage, except instead of computing’s future, he’s got something more immediate in mind. He gathered spare parts, work night and day, until it becomes clear he’s building a life-size R2D2 replica. HP Inc. determined the power of the commercial as it shows what the droid is used for.
Hewlett-Packard split into two separate companies back in November 2015, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, which covers industrial-grade server computers, networking equipment, software and services; and HP Inc., which focuses more on the consumer-facing PC and printing business. This Star Wars-themed ad has successfully set the bar, as it was HP Inc.’s first brand campaign after the big split. Its chief marketing officer Antonio Lucio claims that HP’s tagline “Keep Reinventing” should be acknowledge much more than a slogan, but a mission for the company to remain relevant.
The Heart and The Brain
One of the main reason why Star Wars was picked as the ads theme was to make it as memorable and identified with the brand as much as possible. It supports HP’s decision to use technology and Star Wars as a vehicle for emotion.
Lucio claimed that he wanted to bring back the heart into the brand since HP seemed to resemblance more of the brain. Lucio stated that when the heart commits, the brain can only follow—thus bringing back an emotional connection to the HP brand became a priority.
“Keep Reinventing”
The big split may be viewed differently by different group of people—for investors, executives, employees, and consumers. For Lucio, the split is an opportunity to reframe what the brand stands for in the context of its new business reality. The first question raised by Lucio was how much do the team want to incorporate the rich history and legacy of HP into their new identity. Which is why the first step that Lucio took was to create a new vision and mission statement.
In order to do that, they surveyed more than 10,000 employees to help reinventing HP. History that they wanted to keep were set aside from the ones they want to leave behind.
Secondly, they strongly see “Keep Reinventing” not just as a slogan, but as a commitment that reflects how HP works, behave, and perform. It has to reflect the ethos, consumer truth, and company truth that target the reinvention of technology to make life better.
Bottom line, Lucio has embraced the culture, aligned everyone under one vision and mission, and stroked a chord both externally and internally. He made sure that the brand comes to life with meaningful impact on the consumers and employees around the world.
