‘Mouse has a house’ wins Best use of creative for Hewlett Packard

Hewlett Packard (HP) is one of the UK’s biggest personal computer brands. In the IT market, communications have tended to focus on deals or technical specifications. In response to this, HP launched the ‘Computer is personal again’ campaign to increase customers’ emotional connection with their brand and so drive sales and improve margins.

The ‘Mouse has a house’ initiative further developed this message. It focused on innovative features in HP notebooks that help customers in their everyday business and personal tasks.

Standing out from the crowd

The HP 2510p notebook is targeted at business users that travel regularly.The campaign needed to generate awareness and consideration among a mobile workforce and business decision makers, technology professionals and IT managers. Particularly targeted were small and medium-sized businesses of 50-250 employees. Two key facts had to be borne in mind:

  1. The audience is on the move and often engaged in another activity at the same time
  2.  Commuters are bombarded with sensory clutter, meaning that the creative would have to be bold and simple to be eye-catching.

The mouse became the animated character, mirroring the bustle of the audience. It was intended to encapsulate the personality of the line and was memorable enough to stand out and engage the crowd.

McCann Erickson’s creative approach was to interpret the fully integrated Bluetooth mouse as a mouse fully at home, although out and about. Two different executions were created:

  1. On the underground and city centres a representation of a mouse in his house was shown with arched doorway and windows.
  2. On trains, in cabs or waiting at train stations where the audience has more time to consider the ad, the mouse’s house was shown to be the notebook itself.

In tune with its environment

The campaign sought to take advantage of touchpoints where an ultra-portable mobile would resonate with the audiences’ activities at that time. Digital offered opportunities to reach audiences on their journey to work or travelling on business. It was selected as it reached the right audience at the right time and allowed greater creative flexibility than traditional outdoor.

Media was used in various forms of transport including Heathrow Express TV, Centro Train FX TV, London black taxi Cabvision and access escalators to the London Underground. Forty-eight sheet city screens were used at key business city districts in London, Glasgow, Manchester and Birmingham. Creative executions were then tailored to match the varying likely dwell times at each site.  In addition 20” transvision was used at railway stations in the four main centres plus Edinburgh, Leeds and Liverpool.

The business press such as Management Today and Growing Business provided support in building coverage and frequency, while niche publications such as Computer Weekly and Mobile Computer reached business audiences when they were thinking about business issues.

ROI

The campaign was tightly targeted to build coverage and frequency as cost effectively as possible. It ran from August 27 to 31 October 2007 with a total budget of £295,414. During that period sales rose by 4.2 per cent. As a result HP was able to reclaim its position as the UK’s top PC manufacturer in the first quarter of 2008.

‘Mouse has a house’ changed the perceptions of the HP brand radically to an innovative manufacturer of exciting products.

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