November 18, 2002

NY Times: A Shift in Focus for Hewlett-Packard Ads

My spin:This is what differentiates boys from men...HP will spend hundreds of millions on advertising, smaller companies can't come close to this. HOWEVER, will advertising keep HP a leader in the PC industry. Sure it will - people will buy what they are most comfortable with.

WHEN Carleton S. Fiorina was unexpectedly chosen to become chief executive of Hewlett-Packard in 1999, many people in the computer industry questioned whether she was up to the job. But no one really doubted her skills as a marketer. She had made her reputation at Lucent Technologies as the executive who repositioned and rebranded the telecommunications equipment maker prior to its spinoff from AT&T in 1996.

Ms. Fiorina brought her confident marketing touch to Hewlett-Packard and quickly put a new focus on the company's marketing and branding program. A fragmented system, with product divisions and sales regions doing their own marketing, was streamlined and centralized. Its advertising carried a unifying logo, "hp invent" ó an attempt to link the Silicon Valley company's innovative past with its present. (full story)

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